


Yellow Dragon - Telling Tales

by Blackmarch



Category: Gakuen Mokushiroku | Highschool of the Dead, Parahumans Series - Wildbow, RWBY, Sherlock Holmes (2009)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Compliant, Cowgirl Position, F/F, Fic Spinoff, Funny, Futanari, Hilarity, Omake, Oral Sex, Other, Power Dynamics, Power Fantasy, Power Imbalance, Power Play, Random Realities, Recursive SI, Rough Sex, SI, Sex, Snips - Freeform, Vaginal Fingering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-18 20:28:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 56,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28998267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blackmarch/pseuds/Blackmarch
Summary: The weekend is long, and Yang needs to keep her writing skills sharp. What better than one-shots and omake to flex those creative muscles?And inflate her already gigantic ego, of course.
Relationships: Neopolitan/Yang Xiao Long, Nora Valkyrie/Yang Xiao Long, Saeko - Relationship, Saeko Busajima/Yang Xiao Long, Takagi Saya/Yang Xiao Long
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	1. The Opener

**Author's Note:**

> This is a canon-compliant addition to my other story, Yellow Dragon - Chasing Tail! Something I have to get back to for sure! And I will!
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/19043482/chapters/45231835
> 
> Also, here it is! If you aren't sure what's happening here, read the main story first!

“Behold my true power!” I roared as I ripped the mask from my face. Blood flew. The pain was horrendous. Entirely new flames, me and not burned over my body. “Come forth! Ya-”  
  
==========  
  
I slammed my head into my writing desk. It hurt. A lot.  
  
It was a good hurt. One I deserved.  
  
“Of all the hackiest hacking hacks to have ever hacked when it came to the written word, you are the hackiest, Charlie Brown, ” I muttered to myself...what else could I say? Like, really? _Really_? Summoning yourself as your own Persona? That’s pathetic.  
  
I slowly picked myself off my desk, leaving behind a slightly moist and very warm circle of mist on the top of my desk. It evaporated and I let out a sigh of relief when nothing started to liquify. Or smoke. Or burst into flames.  
  
That wasn’t a problem or anything, or at least it hadn’t been in several years as I got a handle on my emotions, but there was nothing wrong with some healthy paranoia. Not when it came to your stuff.  
  
“I am not feeling this at all lately,” I grumbled as I hit a very familiar macro on my word processor program. It archived what I’d been working on into the folder labeled ‘Bad ideas’ while my copy machine began to whir; Thankfully this example of self-indulgent drek wasn’t too long. You think printer ink is expensive? Try using archival quality.  
  
I’d seen Neo recoil from the receipts and not even as a joke. I tried not to think about that though.  
  
As to why I used archival ink and paper? I wasn’t going to let a server backup error or a bad boot sector destroy my work no matter how shit it was. How else was my family going to support themselves for decades after my death by rooting around my desk for my notes if there were no notes to root through? I was one of the biggest entertainment influences in the last hundred years. People would _kill_ to read through my notes when I died.  
  
Leaving behind a life of leisure for those I cared for was the least I could do...and besides. Zwei’s descendants needed a nest egg. How else were they going to afford wet food and belly rubs and treats without me?  
  
As I pulled a new sheet of paper out of a drawer, I could feel a presence behind me. Subtle, out of sight, plotting. As I wasn’t worried about pissing blood for a week, I knew it wasn’t Neo. And as I didn’t feel like burning someone’s eyes out with a flashbang, it wasn’t my egg donor. That left only one person that it could be.  
  
“Here you go, Blake, but it’s not going to go anywhere,” I said as I held the papers up over my shoulder. The only sign that she’d ever existed all was a light breeze and the papers slipping from my grip.  
  
I rolled my eyes. If reading my scraps made her happy, well there were far worse things she could be doing. Like competitive sandcastle building.  
  
At least my stuff was quality. With a strong foundation and a beautiful finish.  
  
Blake had good taste...and I needed to do something. I needed to get out of the dorms, go off campus and do something. I was obviously in a rut here. And I might have needed to rut something. As I did.  
  
Maybe Neo was off of work? It never hurt to ask.  
  
I picked up the several sheets of paper that my machine had spit out like the trash they were. I then held the printouts in front of me, checking to see if the printer was still working.  
  
Again. My notes had to be _perfect._  
  
“Are all of these about you?”  
  
I leaned back in my seat instantly, my feet hitting the top of my desk to keep me anchored while my seat was tipped back far enough to see behind me. I also hid my surprise. “Hello, Weiss.”  
  
“You are the most powerful person in this.” She refused to greet me back. “By far. The most competent. The most beautiful.” My partner, proving that living with people that didn’t want to drink my blood for sexual reasons had weakened my danger sense, flipped through the notes I’d handed her. The horrified but reluctantly fascinated expression on her face filled me with an odd sense of joy. “And you have legions of lonely young women lusting after you. What is this?”  
  
“I write what I know, Weiss. Some of us are more blessed than others.” I crossed my arms under my chest. My chair creaked. _Blake_ wouldn’t have done this. “And I deserve to be happy. Don’t you judge me.”  
  
I did enough of that on my own time.  
  
“You’re a sad, lonely little person.” She sniffed at me with her nose in the air. Then she flipped through it again. “It is rather well written though. And oddly intriguing.” She placed them down on the desk. Carefully. With a begrudging tone. “What else do you have?”  
  
I rose a brow. “I don’t have anything with you in it yet if that’s what you’re asking.”  
  
“Yet?” She seemed startled by this. Then pleased. As expected. I had her. That was easy. “You can change that while I look through the rest then. Just keep me true to life, if you would. As an equal and not another bystander in your story.”  
  
“Sure, Weiss. Sure. When I get to it.” Or when it was funny was my thought as I fell forward, the legs of my chair thudding into the carpet. “I’m between scripts right now so I might be able to get somewhere with something by the end of the week.”  
  
She blinked. Ruffled the papers some more, this time with a thoughtful eye. “... You do scripts? For who?”  
  
“I do lots of things, Weiss. And that’s confidential. Just - just give me a second to show you what I have.”  
  
Nothing wrong with a second opinion that wasn’t Blake kissing my ass some more, I guess...  
  
That was a sometimes thing.


	2. School is Canceled - Dead Outside: Pyre of the Dead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A YDCT/Highschool of the Dead cross. The first chapter of, so far, two chapters.
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/19043482/chapters/45231835
> 
> Read this (and the first chapter of this thing we've got) to get an idea of what's going on!

All it had taken for my day to turn to absolute shit was me turning a corner.

No, that wasn’t an exaggeration. That wasn’t embellishment either. All it had taken to throw the rest of my day into the trash was me turning the corner for yet another grueling torture session with Port… A torture session that was also known as ‘class’, for you lot that can’t read between the lines.

Weiss, as ever when it came to authority, had been wrong about him and his teaching methods. He’d never gotten any better. In fact, I was pretty sure that the only thing he’d gotten better at was _talking_ … He’d been going easy on us. That was the only explanation as to why every lesson with the man, two hours long, now felt like six and counting.

How did the man even _breathe_? Did he? That would be a more useful Semblance than most, I have to say, not needing to breathe. Sleep apnea was a real problem at his age. Too bad he was using such a wonderful thing to torture the youth, that monster.

… Anyway… My day hadn’t exactly been looking too good in the first place. That was what I had been trying to get across. The only thing worth taking away from this was that this was one of Port’s ‘practical’ lessons… So, when I’d turned the corner in full combat kit, only to find myself in an entirely different corridor in an entirely different school, I hadn’t been completely fucked.

Just mostly. I’d just been mostly fucked.

The smell of what I could only call ‘a butcher’s shop writ large’ and the high pitched screams of panicked civilians wasn’t what I’d call ‘good’...and how did I know that they were civilians? Easy. It was in the tone. The pitch. You could just _tell_ … Even if it sounded patronizing, and like an asshole thing to say about people that were dying, it was like hearing a baby cry.

Even Jaune’s screams of existential horror were starting to become more composed. That meant something.

Anyway, these shrieks of terror caught my attention like a hound that had just been thrown a bone. How could it not? I’d been getting hit with the Pavlov stick since before I could punch a hole in solid rock and this was the stuff I’d been trained for. Zeroing in on civilians screaming and dealing with the problem was my entire career.

No one said it like _that_ , seeing as it was stupidly depressing, but that was essentially what being a defender of mankind was all about.

Hunter schools, from Signal and its equivalent on, passively focused on training that ‘hopeless’ and ‘terrified’ tone out of their students. It wasn’t overt, but they did what they could. It wasn’t entirely possible to stamp those feelings out. Even if it were, no one sane would bother. We still had to seem _human_ , like a shining Beacon in the dark. We had to be rallied around, adored, looked up to and sympathized with...but it did enough. It did what it was meant to do.

Screaming Hunters meant screaming civilians. Screaming civilians meant more Grimm. More Grimm meant more screaming. Rinse and repeat. Gotta keep that stiff upper lip stiff and keep trucking on with a smile, no matter how hard it got… All part of the job description.

“Fucking _zombies_.”

But, boy, was it getting really fucking hard to **_smile_**.

A backhand sent a walking corpse, what used to be a pretty girl with a Hello-Kitty keychain attached to a bracelet on her wrist, flying away from me and through the nearest window; shattered glass. Sunlight shining through a thick patina of black blood and a scrap of a school blouse. Poetic, I guess.

I’d never been much of a poet. I’d said that before, hadn’t I?

After pulling my collar over my mouth and my goggles down over my eyes as I went down the hall (there was going to be a _lot_ more blood), everything that turned in my general direction died. Again. Nothing fancy. A straight jab to the general area of their skulls was more than enough to pop them like a paint-filled balloon. That, or send those same skulls flying down the hallway or into the nearest flat surface. One or the other. Either way, it was all semantics.

Killing one zombie or a hundred wouldn’t matter. It never did in these sorts of scenarios… I was just happy these guys couldn’t _run_. Or jump. Or do triple back flips off the high bar. Fuck that noise. If they had done any of that shit, I’d have been heading towards the mountains by now. World War Z was far beyond my pay grade and I would have been shit out of luck when it came to doing what I had to.

… Finding out where I was, or when, or how I got here in the first place was a secondary concern at best. One-on-one, or fifty-on-one, as long as I kept my Aura up the zombies weren’t much of a threat. Now it was just time to take stock. Gather as many survivors as I could from the surrounding area, provide leadership and protection, and _then_ head towards the mountains.

Standard Anti-Grimm Tactics 101, replacing ‘Kingdom’ with ‘rural areas’. Always relevant, always useful. That these things weren’t attracted to negative emotions (that I knew of) only made it better… Better was a given value when you were talking about the dead rising up to eat the living, but I’d take what I could get.

Now, here I go... Towards whatever screaming sounded closest.

A casual fist across the chin spun the head off of my current victim like it was a top. Another cross, a light tap, sent the still ‘living’ skull flying into another former student’s fast enough to put them both down with a crunchy sounding _splat_.

“Two points!”

God, this job sucked.

==========

Sadly, it took less than a minute for the screaming to end. ‘Sadly’, because I’d found my way there and, well...they hadn’t been okay. The opposite of okay. That I didn’t know the lay of the land wasn’t helping but, even then, it was pretty unlikely that I’d have found them in time anyway.

It had been pretty - loud. Loud in a not good way… The shrieks of someone that was in a terrible amount of pain was very distinctive… They hadn’t lasted long as one of the walking dead before I’d come by. That was the best I could do for them.

It’s what I’d done. It hadn’t been pleasant, but it had been done… I needed a shower. I needed one _bad_.

“What are you doing?”

I stopped in place and listened, unsure that I’d heard what I’d just heard.

“Just be quiet, you moron.”

“Okay, okay. Jeez.”

A wet _thump_ and moan to the right of me, somewhere outside and against the wall of the room I’d holed up in so that I could dislodge some bone bits off the bottom of my shoe, told me that I’d heard right. Survivors… I was pretty sure they were survivors anyway. They better be.

If the zombies had learned how to talk to help them draw in their prey, they were about to get a hell of a surprise.

“Did you see that? They didn’t even react when I hit them. They don’t have a sense of touch, the big dumbasses. Their senses are dead. I’m pretty sure they can’t see either. They wouldn’t be walking into lockers otherwise. They hunt by sound.”

“But what about-”

I slid the door open, stepped out, then took a step back just before a nail zipped past my face and down the hall. Good reflexes, that, even if their FOF needed some work.

“Kohta, you idiot!” The pinkette hissed loudly before giving the overweight boy at her side a slap on the shoulder. “You almost shot someone!”

“I-I thought they were one of Them! Do you see how much blood is on their-”

I gave myself a quick look...and, yeah. _Wow_. There was blood _everywhere_... I could see where the mistake had come from and I was already starting to miss the Grimm. At least they were polite enough to vanish all their pieces when they died... This was some bullshit, and I was just going to hope this stuff washed out.

“Yes, I saw! I have eyes, you know! Use yours before you kill someone, fatty!” With a huff that might have been just a tad too loud, considering our position, she turned to me with a resting bitch face that Weiss would have been proud of. “Who the hell are you and what’s with that get up, you weirdo? Do you even know what’s going on right now!?”

Wow. Rude. I bet she had all kinds of friends… Yeah. It was like talking to a pink haired Weiss. There went my nostalgia.

“The dead are attacking the living. I noticed. Do _you_ know what’s going on right now?” I replied softly after a couple of steps toward them, entirely unconcerned about the nail gun that wasn’t _quite_ pointed in my direction… Ah. He’d just ended another of the maggot farms with an off the cuff shot. That boy was a born killer. I could tell. Pinky’s glaring just didn’t compare. “Didn’t you just get done talking about how they respond to sound?”

She looked like she was about to say something _rude_ for a second, then decided to pass on that in favor of her eyes widening and her mouth opening to do a horror movie staple. A real classic, all while Kohta lifted his gun to his shoulder. “Look-”

Oh, look. Here came my chance to assert dominance. How sweet.

I spun around and sort of _stumbled_ to the side; stance entirely stable and feet sure, the old man’s gnarled grey hands missing my shoulders by a mile; my perception of time catching every wrinkle and facet of his face. The milky eyes, the broken teeth. The jaw opened so widely that the skin around his mouth had begun to split into a glasgow grin. Another step, another spin, and two of my fingers found themselves knuckle deep in his brain stem through the back of his neck.

I made sure to wiggle them a little, just to make sure...and there we go. One more dead guy for the pile, all at speeds too fast for the human eye to track. Easy shock and awe tactics right there.

Least effort, max effect! Go me! High five!

“- out? … Wait. What just happened?” Pinky’s warning ended on a questioning note, her eyes set on where I’d _been_ rather than where I _was_. My hand puppet (disrespectful, but technically correct) falling over on its face with the loud crunch of snapped cartilage made her jump, and refocus. “How did you just...? Mr. Toshiro?” She put a hand up to her chin with a grimace. “I think that’s all the PE teachers gone. Crap.”

Kohta just looked - _odd_ \- before that mask of placid affability and the expected shock settled over his features again. It had been kinda hungry. Creepy.

“I’m a world class martial artist. That’s what that was.” That was a _gigantic_ understatement if I’d ever heard one. If this place was what I suspected it was, these people had never seen anything like me before outside of a video game. “Unless you’re looking into getting yourself added to my family register, you’re just going to have to keep wondering about the specifics. Also, I’m sorry for your loss.”

Family registers were a thing, right? Like, they were in Mistral, but that was Mistral. I was just throwing darts in the dark here.

“Thank you, but he was just a teacher. I didn’t really know him…” Fucking _cold_. “Also, God, really? You’re going with secret martial arts techniques? Right here, right now?” She rolled her eyes and casually dropped the finger that had been reaching towards the bridge of her nose… That had looked like habit. Glasses, maybe? Also, for someone that was in the middle of a zombie apocalypse and had what seemed to be zero combat ability, she had a _mouth_ on her. “What Ranma chapter did you fall out of?”

Oh, babe, you had no idea how close to the mark you were with that comment.

“The one where Nabiki stops bitching at the person that just killed a Jiangshi with two fingers and lets Ranma save their life.” I held up those same gloved fingers, a lump of brain matter still stuck between them, for emphasis. “Is this really the time?”

Pinky, who was all of five feet tall and with most of her mass tied up in her tits, puffed up like an angry cat. “Did you just compare me to-”

“Yes.”

“T-Takagi. She’s right,” Kohta interrupted the both of us with a shake of the head and a gesture of his gun down the hallway. Down the hallway that had gone from completely empty of anyone besides us to seven zombies and counting. Spooky. “We’ve gotta go.”

What was the world coming to when the gun nut was the voice of reason? … I mean, the _normal_ gun nut. If my sister had been here, she’d have gone through those guys like a thresher through wheat.

“No one asked you,” Takagi hissed at him as she stood up from her squat from behind her drinking fountain… It was very Japanese. Also, even if she didn’t say it, she knew he was right. “But this isn’t over, super jock.”

Yeah. I hadn’t been wrong the first time. Just like Weiss if Weiss couldn’t fight worth a damn… So, yes. Just like Weiss.

“It never is.” I shook my hand off and that greyish-pink lump found itself stuck against a nearby locker like a wad of fresh gum… That was a disgusting image. “I’m new to the area, but I assume you have an idea of where to go.” I shook my hand again, just to get the last pieces off. “Lead the way.”

“New to the area? You can’t fool me. You mean you’re lost… At least you have the intelligence required to ask for help.” She huffed, her expression switching from infuriated to smug in between breaths. “We’re going outside. There’s nothing left for us here.”

I had my suspicions that she wasn’t wrong about that last part… I wasn’t going to say it though. Just like Weiss, if you gave this girl an inch she’d take the entire highway without hesitation.

I couldn’t afford to look weak right now. Not until I got their trust and their measure… Looking weak for even a second could kill a bid for leadership before it even started.

And them. Them too. They didn’t know me worth a damn. Neither did they have the cultural inclination to follow the brightly colored superhuman weirdo when shit went pear-shaped. I was going to have to prove myself, repeatedly, before I went full survivalist on them and I wasn’t looking forward to it in the slightest.

I was just going to have to hope that we got over that hurdle before someone died...and I couldn’t even set the place on fire yet. Yet. Damn it.

Kohta’s shoulders slumped and he let out a sigh when Takagi began power walking _away_ from the horde tripping towards us. Thank god for that much. She’d struck me as the sort to walk at them and expect everyone else to do the work. “I hate walking…”

“And that’s why you look like a walking bowling ball, lard ass. Some exercise will be good for you.”

… Jesus Christ. Was Takagi trying to catch a bullet to the face or something? Or a nail? Keeping her alive was going to be a task all on its own, wasn’t it?

“And you, blondie, try not to get lost, will you? We don’t have time to hold your hand.”

Oooooh, yeah. A real task. Downright Herculean. Give me a river to redirect through some shit-encrusted stables instead, please. That was easy compared to this.

“I’m guessing your parents never spanked you,” was my dry observation as we hopped our way down some nearby stairs, a zombie who I’d just pushed blazing the rest of the way by tumbling down those steps with a broken neck. “That’s the idea I’m getting here.”

“What?!” She snapped back without even looking at me, far too busy trying not to fall down the stairs without the help of the bannister. Seeing as it was soaked in blood, the reason as to why she wasn’t grabbing onto it was obvious. “What’s that supposed to mean!?”

“It means that my parental correction hand is getting mighty itchy, Miss Takagi.” Seeing as I’d raised my sister from infancy, it had seen some light use. It wouldn’t take long to shake off the rust. “When one of your allies has a gun and you don’t, affecting some basic politeness is the _intelligent_ thing to do.”

That shut her up for a good thirty seconds. A good thirty seconds and change. Possibly forty… I wasn’t counting. “Did you just call me dumb?”

Not nearly long enough. Enough for Kohta and I to clean out the next flight of anything dangerous, but still not enough. That was how much time.

God this was boring. Beowolves these guys were not.

“... Yeah. Sure. If that’s how you want to see it, that’s what I said. Good job.” She was just picking a fight right now. Falling back on old habits as the world went to shit. Tanning her ass stoplight red wasn’t going to help anyone, no matter how badly I wanted to do it right then… Maybe later. “How far is the exit?”

“Not far,” was her terse reply. That I hadn’t played along seemed to have put her off-center. Great. “Another two floors down at best.”

“Sounds good.” Seeing the chance to take the front that had just opened up, I did so; a long jump, boots together down the last flight of stairs and right on a zombie’s now very flat melon, cemented my place among the group… Sort of. It was a social thing. If you had to talk about it, you weren’t in charge. “What’s your plan then?”

She scoffed and shouldered her bag full of construction tools and nails, drawing yet _another_ tiny horde towards us by doing so. Not the best weapons around, but any port in a storm...and it wasn’t like I couldn’t handle it, so whatever. “We’ll commandeer one of the buses out front, then escape into the city through the gate. It's not rocket science.”

That wasn't a bad idea, considering what they had to work with. Definitely workable… Maybe.

“Okay. That also sounds good. Sounds like you thought that through.” I nodded. “I gotta ask a question though.”

“What?”

“Do either of you have the keys?”

Just outside of the school’s reception area, that place where they put up all the school trophies behind a glass case or whatever you call it, I don’t know, we all came to a stop… It was a very special kind of stop. The kind of stop where everyone just - stands where they are, closes their eyes, and tried not to punch the person closest to them in a frustrated fit.

It was a very familiar stop. One that I used to practice my throwing skills some… I could have been better at it, I guess. It had never really done this seriously before and it wasn’t as if broken shards of glass were the best possible materials for me to work with.

It was all surface wounds. Taking all the skin off of a dead man’s face didn’t have quite the same effect as it would have when they were alive...and I’d totally meant to do that. Totally.

By the time my comrades were ready to talk again with their inside voices, that once-a-student I’d been using as target practice looked like a disco ball. A shiny, pointy, no-faced disco ball. Takagi’s hypothesis, that they were incapable of feeling, had just been proved without a doubt. He hadn’t even seemed to notice his gradual transformation into a pincushion.

Also, this was DADA art in motion. They should put this in a museum. Mr. Bitey, a piece on the life of your average school boy. Beautiful.

“So.” Takagi clapped her hands together, eyes averted from my avant-garde art piece. Someone was uncomfortable~ “What do we do now?”

Good question.

“Dunno. I know I’m blonde and that there’s a social stigma there, but I don’t know shit about hotwiring cars.” Remnant cars, sure. That had been a skill I’d picked up for the hell of it. Anime earth cars? Not a chance. They didn’t even use the same type of fuel or come from the same tech base for God’s sake. Once again, ask my sister. “I’m guessing you guys don’t either?”

“No. No, I don’t.” Kohta laughed awkwardly. “That never came up when I went to summer camp…”

Just learning how to modify a nail gun and turn it into a lethal weapon. That’s all. Nothing big, right?

“And I’m a model student and citizen!” Takagi defended herself. Badly. The Weiss comparisons continued to pile up. “Of course I wouldn’t know how to hotwire a vehicle, you delinquent!”

And she said that like that was something to be proud of. Bleh.

“Now you’re just grasping at straws, Takagi.”

“... Whatever.” She crossed her arms over her ample chest and grumbled as she took several backward steps from the exit. Understandable. I wasn’t all that comfortable with it either. The number of zombies hanging around in there _was_ a little worrying. I didn’t have eyes in the back of my head and keeping my charges safe in the middle of that would be a real bitch. “We need the keys. We just established that. Keep up.”

Man, fuck itching. My spanking hand might as well have been covered in fire ants. I hadn’t even finished my PR training classes, god damn it, and I had to deal with _this_?

Being a good person was hard... And Kohta had just fucking sniped the zombie I was going to punch to make myself feel better.

**I was burning this fucking school to the fucking ground if it was the last thing I fucking did.**


	3. School is Canceled - Dead Outside: Meet Cute of the Living

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The second chapter of that Highschool of the Dead cross, here for your viewing pleasure.
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/19043482/chapters/45231835
> 
> Read this (and the first chapter of this thing we've got) to get an idea of what's going on!

Takagi Saya was a genius.  
  
That statement was not in doubt. She was a genius. A genius among geniuses. The one percent of the one percent. Anything she put her mind to understanding might as well have been an open book...or it should have. It really should have.  
  
The world had been flipped on its head recently. That tended to take the air out of anyone’s sails.  
  
It was _infuriating_.  
  
Infuriating was good. She knew this. It was much better than the alternative, better mad than scared and weeping...but she wasn't any happier about it anyway. Not that there was anything to be happy about.  
  
Take count.  
  
The dead were walking and feasting upon the living. Most of the people she knew at the school she went to were dead-dead or sorta-dead, the rest with their status unknown or that she just plain didn't care about. The lack of sirens within her hearing implied - things - that she didn’t want to contemplate without a safe place to do so and some time to decompress. The bag full of tools and nails she had slung over her shoulder was really heavy and she thought she could feel Kohta's eyes on her ass. That was a lot to try and understand all at once. It was better to pick one and stick with it, something easy to chew on.  
  
… That could have been worded better.  
  
Saya couldn’t help the grimace that came to her face as she sidestepped yet another puddle of blood and viscera. New. Fresh for a given value of the word as it poured forth in a black tide from the ragged stump of someone that she almost recognized. Miyaka? Maemi? Something like that. She’d never had the chance to make sure one way or the other before the living blender her and Kohta were with had made identifying them impossible...and undesirable.  
  
It had taken a single strike to rip their head from their body. It was much easier, and more useful, to focus on the one responsible for the carnage instead. And it was carnage. Saya didn’t even try to kid herself on that point. Anything that came within ten feet of them was just another statistic.  
  
A moan was cut short. More blood flew into the air, splashing across wall to the right of her and a part of the ceiling as yet another mangled wreck hit the ground, face concave and ears oozing grey.  
  
Another statistic and another puddle to avoid. Kohta had started pouting three minutes ago, unhappy about the lack of targets to fill with holes. It sucked to be him.  
  
Now, analysis. Take it from the top.  
  
Whoever they were, whoever Yang (if that was her real name) was, their Nihongo was superb. Superb, but odd. Extremely odd. _Discomfitingly_ odd; A twisted amalgamation of dialects, Kanto and Kansai with odd and nearly unintelligible spikes of what _might_ have been Kyushu-ben. Might. Whoever their teacher had been, they’d have been a madman of some stripe.  
  
The only people that understood Kyushu-ben were people from Kyushu. Its utility was questionable at best and the reason as to why anyone would have taught Yang that escaped her.  
  
The next corpse was left slumped up face-first against a locker, crushed into a pulp by a firm palm to the back of the skull.  
  
They’d also made it clear that they weren’t from Japan or anywhere close at all a few times, not that it helped much in figuring out where she’d come from; somewhere between that line about her being a wandering martial artist and the time Saya had seen her stomp a human head into gory pieces under a high-legged boot. It had been somewhat muddled and not all that important at the time.  
  
Saya had eyes. She had ears. She had been more than capable of figuring that out for herself. It hadn’t been hard.  
  
Yang was astoundingly caucausian, six-feet tall at the minimum, built like Saya imagined the school nurse would have been when they were younger and had given out a clearly Chinese name when asked. The things she referenced whenever she spoke were heavily Western in their content, her lack of understanding when it came to Japan dripping from her every word. Saya had also picked out at least three knives of varying sizes on their person and possessed enough experience, thanks to her parents, to recognize mil-spec gear when she saw it and competence in using said gear; This was Japan. No self-respecting citizen would have needed so many weapons or dressed the way Yang did, so out in the open while being so comfortable about it.  
  
No citizen of any respectable country she could think of would have given a teenager a chest rig festooned with grenades either. And they were grenades. The amount of time Yang had taken to fish out a tooth that had slipped under their jacket had given Saya more than enough time to make sure of that.  
  
The different stripes crossing each row had kept her quiet for once. Red, yellow, white, green… The chances that they were all different flavors of tear gas was unlikely and she didn't want to test them. Too much.  
  
Unlike how she had done with Kohta and everyone else in her life, Saya had yet to judge how far Yang could be pushed. A baseline had to be established.  
  
Where had she gotten them from anyway? What was in them? Would she start throwing them around like some yankee cowboy for the fun of it and get them all killed? Saya didn't know, but something had to be said.  
  
Giant, female, muscle-bound, Chinese-American, zombie-killing, gasmask-wearing, knife-wielding, grenade-throwing, highschool-aged, world-class wandering martial artists didn’t fucking exist. This wasn’t a manga. This wasn’t some shitty otaku-grabbing anime straight out of Akihabara. This was real life, damn it, and there was a perfectly reasonable explanation as to _why_ and _how_ she kept losing track of someone _standing right in front of her._  
  
It was ridiculous.  
  
Yang was constantly on the move. Not just forward at a fast walk that had Kohta and her scurrying to catch up but to the sides. Left, right, the diagonals; the verticals, Yang’s feet having touched the ceiling once in a complicated maneuver that Saya hadn’t been able to follow. Not been able to follow, but had led to the death of a dozen of the undead in less than half as many seconds in an explosion of gore… She hadn’t even broken stride. She’d just shook her hands out, the flickering stutter step effect of a skipping CD coming into existence before Saya’s eyes as Yang asked for directions for the umpteenth time.  
  
… The situation must have been getting to her more than she’d thought. That, or her contacts were defective. Both even. That was the only reasonable explanation Saya could think of as to why-  
  
“You still with us, pinkie? You’ve been quiet for longer than a minute.”  
  
“My name isn’t ‘pinkie’, delinquent! Its Takagi! Takagi Saya!” Saya snapped on reflex, shelving her line of thought for another time as she found herself facing a backward-walking monster in human skin… If they’d been trying to make their gasmask more personable by allowing people to see their eyes through an amber lens, they’d failed. Badly. “Get it right!”  
  
“Oh? I apologize, your highness Takagi-Sama, for asking about your wellbeing in this trying time. Forgive my presumption.” Yang sketched out a bow, somehow not stumbling over her own feet as she did so…that _ass_. “How about you, Kohta? How are you holding up?”  
  
“Like a tub of pig fat in the sun,” Saya muttered. The wheezing told her as much.  
  
“O-oh, I’m fine. Thank you for asking.” Kohta laughed weakly as he waved that off, a laugh cut short by a cough as their pace caught up with him, the goddamn fatass. “This is nothing, nothing at all. I can do this all day.”  
  
Yang gave him a firm and approving nod. “ _Keep on trucking on, soldier._ ”  
  
The sudden English didn’t seem to bother Kohta in the slightest, the salute he sent back in reply as reflexive as Saya adjusting her glasses. “ _Ma’am, yes Ma’am._ ”  
  
Yang gave him another nod, returned his salute, and spun right round on her heel to spin a zombie’s head in a gruesome mirror in miniature. A 180 degree body turn with the squeak of shoes on a polished floor, a 180 degree turn of the head and the snap, crackle, pop of obliterated vertebra that made Saya shudder in disgust. “God damn. These hallways feel like they go on forever.”  
  
“The teacher’s lounge isn’t that far. Quit your whining.” Saya scoffed, refusing to admit that she felt much the same. “All we need to do is grab the keys, backtrack through the path we cleared, get into a bus and drive away. Simple.”  
  
“I like it. It's a good plan. _Very KISS_.”  
  
Saya frowned, her english not being exactly the best but the phrase being one she’d heard from her mother more than once. “Did you just call me stupid? Again?”  
  
“Oh my fucking God, I just want to - no, I didn’t, you oversensitive harridan.” That strobing effect happened again and Yang was there. There, in front of her, towering and looking down at her, hands on her hips and not at all amused. Too bad for her. “You need to chill.”  
  
“What? I need to _what_?” Saya took a heated breath through her nose and shouldered her bag. This had been a long time coming. “How _dare_ you tell _me_ what to-”  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
Saya suddenly found her vision filled with amber glass, found herself sucking back a scream as a pair of bloody hands found her arms and held her still.  
  
“Cut it out with this tsun-tsun bullshit, right fucking now,” Yang began with a sibilant hiss that hurt Saya’s ears, the whistle of air through their respirator a painful emphasis. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but that shit was never cute. Not when you were the smartest girl in school, or the richest or the most popular or what the fuck else you might have been. Never. Now, as the world falls down around our ears, it's doubly uncute...and its fucking _dangerous_.”  
  
Saya sputtered, words failing to get through the tightness in her chest. No one had ever treated her this way. No one. Not her parents, not her tutors, not her servants, **_no one._** Where the flying fuck was Kohta!? “I-I - you-what are you-?!”  
  
“Whatever your relationship is with Kohta, or the lack of it, that’s between you,” Yang overrode her, trampling her words beneath her feet without notice. “Maybe you trust him not to put a nail in your leg after one insult too many. Maybe you trust him not to leave you to fend for yourself when you bring one last problem on his head.” Yang’s forehead pressed against hers, those lenses and the eyes behind them becoming Saya’s whole world. “But do you trust me?”  
  
No. That was a resounding no. How could she? Saya didn’t even know her. She didn’t know anything about her. The only thing she knew was that Yang was **_dangerous_** and that, if she wanted to, all it would take to end Saya would be a flick of the wrist. All it would take was...  
  
Ah, _crap_.  
  
“I see that you’ve got my point. You’d think you would have done that the first time around on the stairs, but here we are.” Yang’s hold on her loosened slightly, from unbreakable to mere steel as she picked up on Saya’s burgeoning panic. “If you’re going to give people shit, then do it behind closed doors and when they don’t have a weapon on hand. _Not_ when they’re in the middle of saving your life and have a kill count that’s about to hit the triple digits after an hour of work. Its distracting.”  
  
“I’m out!” Kohta called out...and that was that.  
  
Saya instantly found herself standing alone. Looking up at the ceiling instead of into glass, her knees losing strength and nearly spilling her to the floor; a pair of bloody handprints on the shoulders of her blouse the only signs that Yang had been there at all instead of carving her way through the small horde that had built up without her, stalled by Kohta ( _that’s_ where he’d been) and his nail gun… There was a small pile of mostly intact bodies that hadn’t been there before, a sign of the work he’d put in while Yang and her had been - busy.  
  
Small or not, it was far too large.  
  
Yang hadn’t been gone for that long, had she? She hadn’t been gone for so long that Kohta had run out of nails or gas, had she? How much noise had they made in their argument for Them to gather like that?  
  
“Takagi! I need a new roll of nails!” Kohta ran over, his hand out in a silent demand that made Saya bristle as her knees regained their strength. Good. If there was anything to help her come back to herself it was demands from idiots. “Hurry!”  
  
“You need a new magazine? Why?” Saya scoffed, Kohta’s need ringing hollow while Yang did her duty in the background. “That sounds like a personal...” Saya trailed off into a faint whisper, her hair standing on end when she felt a gentle pull on her bag. “Problem?”  
  
“Problem,” Yang agreed coldy, quickly and efficiently removing Saya’s bag to place it over her own shoulder, permanently staining it red. A roll of nails then passed into Kohta’s hand effectively at the same time a cordless drill appeared in Saya’s; she nearly screamed. “Aim for the eye socket and lean into it until they stop moving.”  
  
Saya quickly looked down at the drill, the weight in her hand horrifying in all its implications, then back up. “A-ah?”  
  
“Some people need incentive to learn. You seem to be one of them. I’m taking my ten minute break from keeping you alive,” Yang loomed over her once more with her answer. “And if anything happens to you in those ten minutes…? Well.” She shrugged. “That sounds like a personal problem, doesn’t it?”  
  
 ** _Crap_.**  
  
“Hey, uh… Yang? Ma’am?” Kohta interjected, his fingers fumbling a nail he was loading as a line of sweat ran down his brow. Finally, he was doing something _useful_ for once _._ “Don’t you think that’s a little-”  
  
“No.”  
  
He immediately looked down and focused on his weapon with a halting, “okay,” and Saya was made speechless.  
  
Really? _Really?_ His one chance to validate his existence, and he just went and wasted it? That gutless sonofa-  
  
“Saya! Hirano! You’re alive!”  
  
Oh thank the Kami! _Numbers_! People between her and Them! _Sensible_ people! People that made _sense!_  
  
==========  
  
“Komuro, you idiot, asshole, utter dumbass, where the hell were you!?” Saya shrieked, drawing every zombie in the school towards our location before I had the chance to wring her neck… I felt like an asshole now. Her and Weiss were nothing alike and I’d be sure to tell her when I next saw her again. “You took your sweet time, dick!”  
  
“Nice to see you too, Saya.” Komuro, the new black-haired addition to my little band of survivors (not that he knew it yet), just sighed and rubbed his head. It was nice to see her verbal abuse extended to everyone. Really. I thought Kohta and I were _special_. “Sorry if I didn’t think following the trail of bodies was the best idea. If it wasn’t for me hearing you, I’d have just passed it by.”  
  
That was fair. I hadn’t considered how my methods and their aftermath would have come across to anyone that were exposed to them. Notes taken.  
  
Saya turned towards me, mouth open and ready to unleash a blistering bitching session. She then stopped, considered what she was about to do and to who, then turned back to Komuro and friend… Tangent. Was there something in the water? These girls weren’t me or anything, but _damn_ if they weren’t carrying some serious weight at the front and back. “Don’t be so gutless! Anything that’s killing Them is clearly not Them! Man up!”  
  
“Yeah, yeah...and wait a second.” Komuro, finally catching onto there being more than three other people in the hallway thanks to Saya’s reticence in giving me shit, turned towards me; Gawked at me, his hands tightening around the handle of his bat as he took me in in all my glory… It was all the blood, wasn’t it? “Who the hell are you?”  
  
“Yang Xiao-Long.” I started. “Wandering martial artist, survival expert, weapons connoisseur, hunter of the supernatural, all around badass and killing machine.” I gave him a beckoning wave as I returned to my murderous amble towards the teacher’s lounge. “Let’s walk and talk. I want out of here already.”  
  
“But-” His friend spoke up before I cut her off. She didn’t look all that happy about it, but tough shit.  
  
“We need the bus keys to get out of here. Right now. Walk and talk. The longer we take, the more likely everyone you know and love is dead. Let's go.”  
  
 _That_ was what got people moving. A short, shocked pause. Some hissing and information exchanging. The tap-tap-tappety-tap of schoolboy and schoolgirl shoes on school flooring...and there we went, me with all my ducks in a row, new and old.  
  
Good. I’d been worried. **_These people had no sense of priorities._**  
  
Bad enough they were enabling (That was what they were doing, even if they didn’t know it) Saya, preventing her from realizing the seriousness of the situation and the need for her to chip in, but then they had to ask silly questions while in the middle of a combat zone. A soon to be very hot combat zone, once again, thanks to Saya. Thanks to the girl that had been the one to point out that the local zombies hunted through _sound_. Do you see the problem here?  
  
 ** _What was her damage?_**  
  
I knew that she was a civilian. I knew that she’d never seen real danger in her life. I understood that it could be hard to acclimate to a change in circumstances as big as this one...but this was just too much. Taking some bitching from some panicking civilains was a part of the job description, same as the systematic murder of anything that could threaten sapient life, but fucking _wow._  
  
Had I said that I was mad yet? Because I was. Super mad. Totes. ‘No wonder my Uncle drank’ mad.  
  
… Anyway, on _my_ list of priorities, Saya was currently somewhere at the very bottom. Somewhere next to fortifying a glass house with coffee cup styrofoam. Anyone that could refuse to give one of her only defenders ammunition during a survival scenario, _ammunition that they were carrying and weren’t using themselves_ , due to some misguided sense of entitlement was someone that was going to find themselves taking a long walk outside one day. That, or shaping up. One or… That last one wasn’t happening soon though, thanks to the appearance of the local badass.  
  
The local badass and friend that seemed to somewhat _like her_ for some reason...or at least tolerate her… How did I know he was the local badass? Easy. Simple deduction, my dear. Hand me my fucking bubble pipe and watch me go.  
  
These zombies may have been a joke to me in numbers less than fifty at all sides, but to these people? They were a serious fucking problem. A _world ending_ problem. Anyone that could survive in this hellhole (that wasn’t me) with a baseball bat and...a broken mop handle (seriously?), for an hour had some serious cajones; some heft and swing to those bowling balls.  
  
That the new girl was as good as attached to him by the hip just cinched his position.  
  
See? That’s the power of deduction. Easy. Brain work good and he had my grudging respect. Ask me how I felt about them when I wasn’t resisting the temptation to choke a bitch though. Later. The answer might just surprise you!  
  
… And now smoke was starting to build up inside my mask, pooling in the respirator. Ugh; Like popping a dress-tenting boner (don’t ask) in front of the class but more embarrassing. That was Semblance incontinence for you.  
  
 _Ugh_.  
  
“So,” New Girl (that was her name now) began from far in the back. Far, far, _far_ in the back… Someone had been telling _stories._ Whether it was about the splash zone or my glowing personality, there had been _stories_ … I’d assume the second. Damn it, Saya. “Hunter of the supernatural, huh?”  
  
“You heard correctly.” Taking the next right into the home stretch, a zombie found itself pushed out, headfirst, through a pre-shattered window with a negligent wave...and I wasn’t lying. If you couldn’t call the Grimm supernatural, what could you? “I kill all the ghoulies and beasties and monsters under the bed whenever I find them, all so that you good little boys and girls can sleep at night.”  
  
She scoffed and I swore I heard an echo. Gasp. Unbelievers. Shocking. “You expect us to believe that?”  
  
“Oh, no. Of course not. That would be silly. I haven’t been sending these poor people back to their peaceful, eternal rest. I’ve just been smacking around the terminally ill and homicidal for my nihilistic kicks. That’s crazy talk.” I wrapped that up with a twirl right in the middle of the hall, streamers of blue flame trailing the tips of my fingers as I carved a burning, flesh-eating furrow straight through the middle of a dead man’s face that dropped him like a rock. “Of **_course_** the supernatural exists, you ninny.”  
  
The blessing that was silence returned with a gleeful vengeance as we came into seeing distance of what I assumed to be the lounge...and oh _boy_ was that a big puddle of blood. More of a lake, really, sitting in front of a pair of double doors… And bodies. Still bodies. Bodies I hadn’t made.  
  
Someone had been doing _work._ Good on them. Gold star.  
  
“It wouldn’t have mattered if we’d gone for the keys before. We wouldn’t have been able to get them by ourselves in the first place,” Takagi forced herself back into relevance with a dark mutter. “I hope they aren’t already gone. Looking through all these pockets is going to be a gigantic waste of time.”  
  
… For once, she’d said something I could do nothing but agree with. Playing corpse pocket treasure hunt during the zombie apocalypse sounded as fun as razor wire toilet paper. “No point in thinking about what ifs when we haven’t even checked the place out yet.”  
  
“You aren’t wrong. No point in thinking about it until we know.” Komuro grunted and stepped up to the front, bat at the ready. “There isn’t a lot of room in there. Call Them out first? Take them in the open?”  
  
I shook my head. “Nah. If there’s anything bitey in there it’s already double dead. It just doesn’t know it yet.” My boots splashed through the puddle as I stepped past him, sending ripples through the red and black and prompting sounds of disgust at my back. “Good thinking though. Keep it up and you’ll go far.”  
  
“... Thanks?”  
  
“Welcome.” A fist rapped against the door jamb in a ‘two-bits and a haircut’ pattern, something real quick that would have anything inside roaring out to find out how my fist tasted like as I pushed open the door. “Dinner’s ready!”  
  
“... Dinner? Isn’t it too early for that?” A vacant, almost _tired_ response was my reply as the door swung open wide. That and a blonde head of tousled hair peeking at me from behind a desk, stacked high with paperwork that made Komuro fall step back with a gasp as suspense struck… It was real high. _Scary_ high...and I guess she’d popped up kind of quick, but whatever. “It’s more lunch time. Maybe linner.”  
  
A woman after my own heart.  
  
“Ms. Marikawa?” New Girl squawked. “You’re alive!”  
  
“Hello~!” She waved happily back at us, drawing in everyone at the back to start sidling around the outside of the blood lake to get to us. “Busujima is here too! Say hello, Busujima~!”  
  
… Kind of a ditz though... Still, that had been a pretty strong open. A good first impression. We’d have to see where that went.  
  
“Hello. I’m glad to see you are all still alive as well.” A new head of hair, this time purple, peeked around the corner of what _seemed_ to be an off-side bathroom. Or kitchen. Somewhere with a sink, the beads of pinkish water running down a politely smiling face giving me more than enough clues to work with… I know it wasn’t all that impressive of a deduction. They couldn’t all be gold. Shut up. “Have any of you been injured? Bitten, maybe?”  
  
That resulted in a resounding chorus of no’s. A fast one... One that Busujima wasn’t entirely listening to, giving them only half an ear as she gave me an up and down. Some of the good ol’ elevator eyes, part caution and part - something else I was profoundly familiar with.  
  
“And who is this? They aren’t a student. Not anyone I know either.” Another look. An extra hint of curl to her smile, a glint in her eye. All very subtle. “You’d think I’d have seen you on the circuit, with a stance like yours.”  
  
That was the same look Neo had when she was _interested_. Fuck my life.  
  
 ** _These people had no sense of priorities. None._**


	4. The New Dragon: Christmas Blows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Worm/Parahumans cross with YDCT. If you've read my stuff, you probably know where this is going. :P
> 
> I wrote this last Christmas. You can probably understand where the name came from then.
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/19043482/chapters/45231835
> 
> Read this (and the first chapter of this thing we've got) to get an idea of what's going on!

**_December 18th, 2009_ **

  
Lung’s mask didn’t fit me all that well. It had to be said. Literally and metaphorically.

He’d effectively been Yatsuhashi-lite. Yatsuhashi if he’d come down with a sudden muscle-wasting disease... He’d had a big fucking head on a tiny fucking body, is what I meant. My head was entirely normal-sized. That made wearing it awkward at best.

I was hot as hell and perfectly proportioned. He’d looked like a scaly Yuathingy (the Predator thing, from that one movie) with mange before he’d keeled over, bleeding from his every orifice as his motor control died along with its associated neurons. Totally different. There was no comparison that could be made between us.

I wasn't dead, for one. That was a big one.

That he’d been a racist, drug-dealing, slave-trading _asshole_ grated against my sensibilities in all sorts of ways. Washing out the blood and liquified organs (poison is a girl’s real best friend) from the inside of it had been kind of like a - a representation of what I was going to do. Of my plans. The first part, I meant, not the whole deal. Course not.

You couldn’t really wash all that shit away. That was a legacy, and those didn’t really die... I was only wearing the damn thing for the _oomph_ required to get my way without taking a page out of the Roman playbook; decimation sounded cool and all, but standing in front of a roaring bonfire in the middle of the night, a bonfire built on Lung’s malformed lizard-bear bones and Oni Lee’s very visible mask on a pole...it just had a little something more to it.

I wasn’t the only one who thought so. The crowd of green-and-red wearing gangbangers that had joined me to celebrate this momentous occasion hadn’t moved a muscle since I’d lit the damn thing. Not a one.

Shock had them in its spidery, chilly, kind of molesty grip. Shock and resignation. I could see it in the lines of their bodies, the slump of their shoulders and the unblinking nature of their stares. For now, I had their attention. For now, this blonde-haired white girl was the center of their fucking worlds.

Life was theatre.

“Hello, everyone. Ni hao. Kon'nichiwa. Annyeonghaseyo. Xin chào. It is wonderful to meet you all.” Years of classes in projecting my voice finally found themselves in use; the crackling roar of my backdrop an awe-inspiring accent as it made me less of a person and more of a steel-faced silhouette. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

Eyes flickered from side-to-side, from gang member to gang member. Sweat ran down faces in unceasing streams down shiny-slick features as the group was filled with doubt. Should they answer me? Should they not? Who would be the first to test the waters, the sacrificial lamb?

“You. Tell me.” I stole that choice, any chance at agency from them by pointing at a random person in the crowd. He couldn’t have been older than seventeen. Still fresh, still young, with hints of a wispy beard at his chin and a shaving cut on a cheek that had never needed a razor in the first place. “Is it not wonderful that I am here to meet you all?”

“It’s wonderful!” The words spilled out of him in the space of a breath as everyone around him decided that _being around him_ was no longer a safe place to be. Subtle at making space, they were not. “It is nice to meet you!”

I let the silence after that fester. Long enough that the poor boy’s eyes began to water with unshed tears before I continued, amused. “I was beginning to think I’d taken over a gang of mutes. This is, indeed, wonderful...but, to business.”

A ripple ran through the crowd at my statement. Now, they had hope they weren’t going to die tonight. They weren’t going to instantly break and run if I said something threatening now! Great. Awesome.

“We are no longer the ABB. We are the Dragons. I am the Sun. You are my hands.”

The boy I’d picked out from the crowd blinked as a pocketful of tinsel settled over his head; Around his shoulders and down his green-and-red sweater as he barely avoided pissing himself.

“And for the love of all that’s holy, we’re changing the fucking colors. I mean, what the fuck is this?” My disgust rang out clearly through the night. “I thought you guys were gangsters, not Christmas trees from the hood.”

Let no one say that I couldn’t play a crowd...and the rest was history.

Retroactively. I was gonna be here a while. Still though. I had a good feeling about this.

The best.

==========

**_December 13th, 2010_ **

I didn’t have a good feeling about this. What ‘this’ was, was a nebulous thing. Intangible. A feeling of danger that didn't’ come from anything physical or ‘real’... It was unease made manifest. Bad decisions as an alcohol-laden vibe.

Considering this was _my_ nightclub I knew that vibe well.

“Alright so - so you know how I have that one shitty nickname? That one, that, you know, the one with the hole or whatever? Glory hole?” Words tumbled giddily from out between my friend's, Vicky’s lips like change from a broken vending machine. No slurring, just - talking. Right at the border of buzzed and getting-there where people started getting _ideas_. “I just realized that I’ve never even seen one before! Like, a real one. Isn’t that crazy?”

It was that feeling people get when their friends (I wasn’t entirely sure how that had happened either, the friends bit, it just had) were about to make the transition from ‘having fun’ to ‘being fun’. There was a difference. ‘Having fun’ meant exactly what you thought it might. It meant that you were having fun. That was a good thing.

‘Being fun’ meant that you were liable to end up on the featured list on Pornhub, starring in a video called ‘Drunk Slut Gets it in the Butt and Likes it’... Classy, it was not. Also, Bet porn was a hell of a lot like Remnant porn that way. Weird. Porn was porn wherever you were, I guess.

I missed Remnant.

Anyway, as the perpetually sober friend, thanks to alcohol technically being a poison ( _fuck_ ), it was my job to make sure everyone else wasn’t being fun. My job was a necessary one, full of honor and shiz, even if no one ever appreciated it… Ever.

This particular problem, this particular friend, was one of the worst of the lot I’ve ever handled. Thankfully, handling her didn’t come up often, but having to take care of Victoria while she was sloshed fucking _sucked._

Vicky, as great as she was to hang out with, was one of the _most_ infuriating drunks I’d ever met. Overly opinionated, headstrong, and really bad at moderating her super strength and acting like an actual fucking _human_ instead of a wrecking ball; Even though she wasn’t actually invincible, she sure as hell liked to act like she was and everyone had to deal with it.

… My fellow blonde was lucky I was such a good person, and not all that squishy, or she’d have been in some _shit_ by now _._

“Vicky. Come on. No. I see where this is going and it's a stupid idea.” I reached towards her drink while cutting a hand across my throat at the bartender, only to get the other hand batted away for the trouble. Thankfully, she was too wasted to realize that she’d hit me hard enough to turn a normal person’s fingers into powder. That right there was why I had to take care of her, damn it. “That is the worst fucking idea. Stop it. Go home.”

“No! No, you stop! You-” She paused to put a finger in my face and pout. “I’m not going to do _anything_. I just want to see it!”

“Uh-huh.” Like I haven’t heard that one before. “That you and Dean are off this week doesn’t factor at all in this, I bet.”

Her face twisted up in actual anger and I instantly knew that I’d made a mistake...and that it was a really fucking stupid mistake too. I might have been a little tired of dealing with her shit right then, but _wow_. “Fuck Dean! He - he…” She stopped to think of something profound. “And fuck you too!” Thanks, Socrates. “I do what I goddamn want!”

“Vicky, wait, shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like-”

And, with that, before I was even finished she was gone; floating over the heads of the Christmas season party crowd with a pepperminty haze left in her wake… That, and a couple of bundles of fake mistletoe that she blundered into and left to disperse through the dancefloor to create what looked like a possible lawsuit in the near future as people began to slip.

Round globes that were just the right size to fit under the heel of someone’s shoe…a drunk someone’s shoe. Good fucking job, Vicky. Thanks. The only thing that could have made it worse is if she’d emptied a bag of marbles and sprayed the dance area with grease… Fucking… I was going to give her so much shit when she was sober again.

**So much shit.**

I didn’t even have to say anything to have my men start cleaning up, moving people off the floor in the closest thing to an orderly evacuation as was possible so that they could get to doing their jobs. Spilled drinks, broken glass, the odd dropped wallet. All of it fodder in the face of the emergency cleaning crew for the ‘Qrow’s Nest’ as a plan to keep Vicky from totally embarrassing herself or catching HIV sprang to mind.

Good luck explaining _that_ one to Amy, Victoria. Good fucking luck.

A quick text to the men and a group of people with bright yellow patches in the lapels of their suits had the bathroom connected to the one Victoria had just vanished into completely empty; the pretense of there having been a tip of hard drugs being done all that was needed… That several of the people they’d pulled out were looking like a deer in the headlights cemented the excuse; had the whole place on lockdown until it could be gone over with a fine-tooth comb by the night crew.

That shit didn’t fly here. Never would. Not in Dragon territory. What did we look like, the fucking Merchants? If a ‘yes’ is your answer, then you can go fuck yourself. We were the gang of class, sophistication and life-saving back alley treatments. Fuck off.

… Anyway, my plan wasn’t the greatest plan, as was only to be expected when one of the participants was a couple of drinks from a blackout...but it was what I had. It was the only one I could think of right then that wouldn’t result in a fight, possibly a physical one, with an inebriated flying brick with impaired judgment and issues with their motor control.

If not for me being pretty sure that, if she couldn’t get her fix here, she’d just go somewhere else I’d have never done this at all… I just had to hope that she could still feel intimidated because, if not, this could get real awkward, real fucking quick.

Was this how dealing with me was like for other people? Was I being a hypocrite? Was I taking advantage of my friend’s impaired state for the sake of getting a drunken blow?

Nah. That was dumb. Better me than syphilis, that’s what I always say. Always being just now and, also, I had to revise that a little or something. Saying that I was better than syphilis wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement.

I’d think about it.

==========

She was Victoria Dallon. She was Glory Girl. She was the next Alexandria in a goddamn tiara and, damn it, if she wanted to see a fucking glory hole she’d _see_ a fucking glory hole, damn what anyone else said.

No one could tell her what to do unless she let them and, this time, she wasn’t going to let that happen.

People liked to crack jokes about her online. She had a PHO account and that was more than enough for her to catch more than a couple of ‘Glory Hole’ jokes at her expense. They’d got her angry at first, but now they just kind of slid off her back; You couldn’t have an internet presence as a minor celebrity without having an emotional skin as thick as leather...and she’d honestly never seen a glory hole before, so the insult kind of fell flat.

How that was the case, how she’d never seen one of those when she made herself a habit of sneaking into nightclubs whenever she broke up with Dean, getting low-key wasted, and dancing the night away was beyond her… No. That was a lie.

Any place that would let a minor celebrity like her ‘sneak in’ wouldn’t have a glory hole. Fucking _duh_. They were too respectable for that, too professional to have something you could stick a dick in in their bathrooms… Victoria knew that made sense somehow but, considering what bathrooms were used _for_ , that distinction between the normal and the obscene sounded silly.

Victoria had a very vague idea that she was buzzed. What she’d just thought would probably make more sense in the morning or the next time she had a glass of water and something greasy. She knew herself well enough to know that much.

Next time, she’d eat first. Slow it down. Great idea.

The blonde nodded to herself as she made her way down the line of stalls at a slow float. Push the door open, peek inside, don’t see a hole in the wall, repeat. Buzzed or not, that wasn’t exactly all that hard to do. Working eyes, working hands, a mostly working brain and there you go. That was how the world, or the local girl’s bathroom, in this case, became your oyster.

That sounded vaguely sexual, once she thought about it. Girl’s bathroom. Oyster. Whoo and whee was she on a roll today. A _sexual_ roll. A _sexual_ roll with none of the sex.

She just wanted to see what all the fuss was about, not actually do anything...not that it would matter if she did. That was the great part of being single, not being accountable to other people when it came to what you did with your body and stuff; those were the rules of going on a break. Vicky had never, what’s the word, took _advantage_ of those rules or anything, but those were the rules. No one could blame her if she did something when Dean and her were having a break.

… Not that she was going to do something. Vicky was pretty sure she’d said that to herself already. Also how many stalls did one place even need? She hadn’t exactly been keeping count but there had to have been at least ten by now. More than ten as she came to the end of the line and found herself confronted with her first actual obstacle of the day.

**_A locked door._ **

It was just another stall though. A thankfully empty one when a push snapped the locks on it like the cheap pot metal they were. The lack of screaming or panicked swearing was its own sort of encouraging (where was everyone?) as she took a peek inside… It wasn’t anything like she thought it would be.

Oh, sure, there was a hole in the wall (yay), but the seedy quality she’d been expecting to see was… missing.

Still in the air, Victoria closed the door behind her and sort of forced the locks back into place… Twisted them, really, before giving them a pinch and giving herself the privacy she needed to look around the place; examine just what it was that made this place different from just about every shitty movie about criminals she’d ever seen.

First off, there was no duct tape. There was none of that distinctively greasy black shine to be seen. The lack of it around the hole had actually confused her for a second, pop culture’s failure to conform to reality the most offensive thing she’d been hit with all day. Being reminded of Dean and his - Deanness was a close second… There were other things that struck her as weird here.

The floors were clean. The walls were clean. The toilet, oddly out of the way and almost in the corner, was clean. Hell, the _hole_ was clean, inlaid into smoothly lacquered wood that just _fit_ with the rest of the room, dim-purple lighting and all.

“Are those knee pads?” Victoria giggled and couldn’t stop as she toed a pillowy mound at the foot of the glory hole...and, wow, that hole looked a hell of a lot bigger than it had from far away. Comically big. Someone had a high opinion of themselves. “Oh my god, they are! How sweet!”

Personally, she hadn’t had a problem without them when Dean and her had done - things - like that. All part of having a forcefield that made her invincible and everything, but she’d heard _stories_ around the cafeteria tables about bruised knees that made her wince in sympathy...and let no one say that she wasn’t willing to accept hospitality.

The pads made a pleasant-sounding ‘ _pompf_ ’’ noise, still giggling even as she dropped out of the air like a rock. The impact of her knees on the pads was barely even noticeable, even by her standards. Vicky knew quality and, damn it, this was _quality_ , like crushed velvet on her skin... So far, out of all the glory holes she’d ever been in, zero, this was the best, hands down.

The only way she could think of to make it better was a mini-fridge. That was probably too silly though. Too much effort or expense. She didn’t know. It wasn’t like she owned a business or anything. She just punched bad guys and made it look good.

… Now that she was like this, her head was sitting as good as even with the hole in the wall. The completely _dark_ hole in the wall. It wasn’t even that deep. It couldn’t be if they expected this damned thing to be used, right? Had they turned the lights off or something? Did glory holes close up for the night? Because, if so, she was going to be _pissed_.

“Hello? Helloooo?” The blonde called out as she leaned forward, closing an eye as if that would help her see any better. Everything had been going so well up to now... “Is anyone there?” When no one responded she raised her hand for an attention-grabbing knock. “Knock-knock!”

Just a little boop.

One second there was nothing to see. The next, Victoria was flinching away in shock as a beam of light tried to burn a hole in her retina...not really, even if it felt like it. She forgot to knock entirely in favor of rubbing the spots out of her eyes instead; they were quick to disappear, much like the light at the end of the tunnel she’d been looking down.

The level of light where she was, wasn’t the only thing to take a hit. If her confidence had been a ship it would have taken a shot above the waterline as _something_ slithered out of the hole in front of her like a snake, like...like an anaconda. A big, angry anaconda that just kept going and going and going and was actually a big honking penis, _what the fuck_.

Vicky, with a hand over her mouth to hold back a scream, just barely avoided getting bopped in the nose by sliding back off the pads and onto the tile quickly enough to completely screw a normal person’s legs. The power of flight had been the only thing that had saved her from embarrassment after the shock had worn off. Even then, nearly a foot away and through the separation of a wall, it almost reached her again; this was just...what?

The blonde girl, her sense of curiosity momentarily overriding her existential terror, balled her free hand up into a fist and rose it up into the air. To the front of her and to the side of the monster cock’s gigantic tip for a comparison shot. Her fist, his cockhead. His cockhead, her fist… A conclusion was reached.

“It’s almost as fat as my fucking fist. Holy shit,” she said from behind the not-exactly-tiny-hand over her mouth. The other hand fell down and onto her thigh to start rubbing away the phantom sensation of moist _heat_ that had crept over it. “What did they feed this thing? Horse steroids? Hormones? Horse steroids _and_ hormones?”

The size of the glory hole hadn’t just been wishful thinking. That was kind of scary.

She slid back a little further when the person on the other side, somehow, squeezed another half-an-inch of shaft through and into her very-much-crowded stall; a hairless sack with a pair of tennis ball-sized testicles slipping through to complete the tableau, the envy of every porn star to ever exist.

… Victoria hadn’t exactly been exposed to all that much penis in her life, all that much being only one before, but she had to say this was the biggest of the lot. Four, no, _five_ times larger than the last and… It had to be said. Sorry, Dean.

There was a point where empty platitudes ran dry and realism stepped up to the front. This was one of those points… They were on a break. She could say this stuff. Just like she could say this stuff.

Stuff. She had stuff to do.

“H-hey, guy. Dude. I don’t know what to tell you, but...your dick is really fucking scary. I don’t even know where to start here.” Vicky let out a short bark of uncontrolled laughter as she got up onto her feet, phone in hand and thumb moving as she turned on the camera. Amy would get a fucking _kick_ out of this, she just knew it. “How about you just - hand me your number - and I’ll text you a pic of my tits instead?”

Nothing happened for a while, long enough for her to get a top-down shot and one from the side of mystery man’s tool before it pulled back and gave her some breathing space. It was a relief. Vicky couldn’t even actually feel heat anymore thanks to her powers, but she still felt like the room had become an extra three degrees hotter anyway.

Vicky wasn’t exactly easily embarrassed, but _wow_. It was impossible not to be in this situation, even if all she was doing was taking a faceless selfie of herself with an unbuttoned blouse and some rocking cleavage covered in black lace… What? So what if she still had her bra on? It was still a tit pic. She hadn’t lied.

They were lucky to get this much from her. They better appreciate it.

It took a while longer for anything more to happen, long enough for her to button her blouse up again and start wondering if the guy on the other side had left; the dry whisper of a rock hard shaft against wood pulling her away from her home portrait… It was as good as it was going to get. Also, it looked like someone was suffering from a misunderstanding.

“Hey, guy. I said I wanted your number.” She frowned and took another picture, this time with the camera aiming straight at the glans… Vicky hadn’t noticed it before, but this thing curved _up_ at the end a little. Had it never heard of gravity? “Did you not hear me or something?”

Victoria had to say that this continued silence, her having to do all the talking was starting to get a little annoying. Sure, anonymity was important, but this wasn’t making her not-job any easier. That her glory hole counterpart had suddenly started bounce in what might have been an attempt at communication was just…it wasn’t helping. Anything.

God could they bounce though. It was almost hypnotic.

“I don’t know morse code.” Vicky crossed her arms over her chest, brow furrowed as she steadfastly refused to look at it straight on. “And if you’re not going to take this seriously, I’m-” Her brow furrowed even further, her eyes flicking as something caught her eye. A splash of color. “The hell?”

Some more flicks and she gave up that ‘I don’t see you’ game entirely to focus on what she thought she’d saw… What she’d thought she’d saw existed. What she’d thought she saw was - kinda dumb.

It was also the funniest thing she’d seen all day.

Vicky made a very unladylike noise. A low, thick grinding in the back of her throat that turned into a snorting, coughing laugh as soon as she realized what she was looking at; lines. Thick, clear (as clear as you could get over the vein-riddled landscape that was the canvas), bright yellow lines that could have only come from a sharpie. A string of numbers that started at their crotch and ended an inch or two just under the head.

Whoever they were, they weren’t lacking in confidence or a sense of humor. That was for damn sure… They’d delivered what she’d asked for, so she couldn’t really complain.

“Alright. Alright, we get it. You’re a real stud.” Vicky snorted again as she leaned in some for the sake of correctness. She smelled sandalwood. Not the cheap stuff either...and just a hint of something she couldn’t identify. Something with a _bite_. “I’m sure you’ll make someone very happy someday.”

The first few numbers, the ones closest to the base, were easy to get. Look, type, move on. The ones past those were - harder. Not exactly understandable at first glance as she was introduced to the worst possible version of an optometrist’s eye test she could imagine. A couple of drinks, low light and, as she got closer to the end of the road, a noticeable increase in _throbbing_ and _twitching_ wasn’t doing her vision any favors.

It wasn’t as if that was on purpose, she thought. The throbbing and twitching, she meant… It was just something that happened when guys were hard. It was a matter of biology and they couldn’t help it, she knew that much, even if this was sort of an extreme case. That the base had been more ‘stable’ and easier to handle was just common sense.

“Just - fucking…” Vicky wrote down digit six and began her attempt at deciphering seven. Fluorescent yellow sharpie should never be this hard to read. “Stand still for a second!”

Biology sucked. So did common sense. Especially common sense...and her for listening to the stupid thing.

Common sense was also known as ‘listening to your gut’. She did that a lot.

“There we go. You’re not moving. Give me a moment to... I...uhm...” Vicky’s decision not to touch the intimidating length she was sharing a room with ended without any actual thought, her body freezing up when common sense momentarily took the wheel and fixed the problem she was having. Physically. With her hand, fit snugly behind and against that ridiculously large cockhead… It was a lot softer than it looked. “Almost got it.”

Common sense got her in trouble a lot too.

The final numbers clicked into place in her call list with mechanical precision, muscle memory pushing her through the weight of the dick in her hand. The not-weight of her palm wrapped around the steel-hard length while it spasmed and kicked against her grip; the rush of blood going through it was enough to make her imagine that it was trying to escape… Not that it could. Not unless she wanted it to.

She circled her thumb. Once… It was smooth. Almost silky except for that pulsing, ropey kinda bump right… Oh. That was… Yeah.

Vicky’s throat felt tight, her mouth sort of dry. Too dry for her to speak right then as her picture found itself in the mail with the press of a button. In the air and gone to some big-dicked mystery man for them to use as jerkoff material; a shitty consolation prize when he’d been looking for a quick tug and blow.

… What was she doing?

“There you go, guy. Enjoy it. I gotta go.” That splash of clarity had her pulling her prick-holding hand away like it had been on a hot stove, giving the organ back to the tender mercies of gravity… A dot of - something shiny - fell to the floor with a wet splat… That dot, all spread out on the tile, was the size of a silver dollar at the least. _Jesus._ “It was nice meeting you.”

As she finished uncrimping the locks and made her way out into the greater bathroom, she _swore_ that she got a wave goodbye… Yang would never know what happened here. Ever. This had been a stupid idea.

She’d never be able to live it down.

==========

“... I guess I won the argument. But at what cost? **_At what cost!?_** ”

==========

**_January 4th, 2011_ **

Another day, another break. Another trip to the Qrow’s Nest so that she could talk Yang’s ear off (did that girl ever _leave_?), and relax in what was, hands down, the best club in the city. Having taken a couple of days off to make the rounds of the rest, Victoria could say that with confidence.

The company was great. The drinks were on point. The decorations changed every other day in a way that, somehow, wasn’t weird and kept things fresh. The music, from what she could tell, was made entirely in-house; She’d never heard them anywhere else, not even when she looked for them on the net.

The ‘Just Live’ dance mix got her sorta anxious though. In a good way, to be clear...but anxious. It was a really good song... That it only came up in videos made in the club said a lot about how much someone was investing in the place.

The club was someone’s baby. That’s what it felt like to her. What did she know though? She was just there for the drinks, even if she didn’t get as many as she used to anymore. Vicky would have liked to say that was a personal choice, but, well, it wasn’t.

If they wanted her to drink less, maybe they shouldn’t have made their stuff taste so good… That had sounded better in her head. Less boozy.

_Anyway,_ someone had told the bartender to cut her off at three drinks in. Just enough to get her buzzed, but not quite enough to help her relax. She couldn’t even complain about it either without looking like a total bitch. Not really. Technically, she wasn’t even allowed to drink in the first place. Making a fuss over a cutoff when management was already looking the other way for her was just a bad idea all around.

Where would she get her Strawberry Sunrises if not here? From the Palanquin? That dive? Pfft, no. This wasn’t a hill to die on, no sir. The big girl pants were on and she’d find a way to survive without.

Vicky had other problems. Qrow’s Nest tangential problems. It wasn’t really their fault but - it might have been better if she’d stopped visiting when she had free time. Or at all. It wasn’t like she couldn’t meet the girl that was rapidly becoming her best friend outside of the nightclub after all.

Those pics were still on her phone and, for some reason, she hadn’t been able to bring herself to delete them.

Oh, she’d thought about it. Of course she had. There had been a couple of times when she’d been about to do it only to forget. Or, ‘forget’; Amy hadn’t even seen it either, even though that was the reason she’d taken the damn things in the first place… Maybe. What drunk Vicky had thought wasn’t all that clear to sober Vicky, other than it not being the best possible decision to make.

No one knew she had them but her, and it was better it stayed that way. Who would she show them to? Dean? God, no. Even if she was angry at him, which she currently was, she wasn’t a monster. Anything that tempted her to bring those up and how she’d got them would mean the end of any chance at a relationship, let alone the chance of being friends.

She didn’t really see something that bad ever happening… So no one would ever have to know that the blonde had taken to fingering herself while using them as an aid.

It was porn. Just porn. Porn that she’d gathered herself, yeah, but it was just porn. People rubbed themselves off to the stuff all the time, playing out their fantasies with a keyboard and screen. What she was doing wasn’t all that different.

… Size not-withstanding if she was going to be honest, it had been a very nice cock. Very - masculine. Burly; She had no idea why she’d thought their nuts had been the size of tennis balls though. Giving them a second look, they’d been more the size of eggs. Still huge, but not… That would have been a medical condition or something, right?

She wasn’t Amy or anything, but that sounded right. Vicky had just chalked that up to drunk Vicky being themselves and moved on with her life after. Her strange, sad life; Victoria had kept the contact as well and named it ‘Lizz’. Strange and sad was a good descriptor.

That hole she’d dug for herself just kept getting deeper, huh? It wasn’t a very good look for her... In her defense though, she hadn’t even thought about it once the break had ended and she’d gotten back with Dean...almost a month ago? Yeah. Almost a month. That was ‘almost’ a record (ouch); She hadn’t even thought about that contact once through that month. Hell, she’d forgotten about it until _now_.

Her recent fight with Dean, their break and the venue had brought that memory rushing right back though… She had impulse control issues, okay? The drinks, all of three, might have helped her along but - she’d been angry too. She hadn’t been thinking straight.

_‘Are you at the club?’_ was all she’d wrote. _‘Yes.’_ was all she’d got back. The sequence of events after that hadn’t been all that important, other than where she’d ended up… Where? In a suspiciously empty bathroom in a painfully familiar bathroom stall, of course.

The only reason she was thinking of this, any of this, was because her anger had cooled a little. Slightly. Thinking hadn’t exactly been a priority before but it had just gone up a few places on the list… Not to the top though.

At least she hadn’t thrown a birdbath into the Bay. Again. Her allowance couldn’t take another hit like that; Forgiveness and her had a tempestuous relationship… Another text sent off, blood roaring in her ears as she did so and she got an answer of ‘ _here_ ’, kept her there.

This time, when the hole opened on the other side, she wasn’t rendered half-blind. She wasn’t on her knees either or looking at it straight on like it was a bullet train and she was the hapless cow on the tracks. Instead, she was to the left. _Far_ to the left. To the left and with a front-row seat of the action that was… Oh, Christ, she should have brought a ruler.

A big ruler. _Big_.

Victoria nervously licked her lips as the sheer _length_ of the thing impressed itself on her… Like, she’d seen it before but - it was an entirely different show when she was mostly sober instead of in the first stages of white-girl wasted. White-girl wasted or from a picture. Nothing beats seeing something in real life when it came to verification.

And, boy was she getting some verification. All of the verification.

It just kept _going_. How far, she couldn’t say. The best she could do when it came to an estimate being ‘way more than six-inches’ and, really, that was more than enough to go with. A quick fist-check told her that Drunk Vicky hadn’t been talking out her ass. It really was just a little smaller than her fist. Like...where did she even begin? That kind of girth was just _nuts_.

Vicky gave it even odds of cracking her forcefield if it ever hit. Jokingly. Half-jokingly. She wouldn’t be all that surprised if it happened...better not to underestimate it. At least she knew it was them and not someone else.

This was good as ID and much harder to fake. She had two of one and none of the other. She knew what she was talking about.

“Sup, guy? Nice to see you again,” Vicky started off, happily surprised that she didn’t choke. “I see you’re still - you.” She coughed from behind a fist as their nuts fell through the hole as well, hitting the wall beneath with audible slaps. “You’re looking healthy.”

The gigantic cock, in seeming response to her words, flexed. She didn’t really have a word to describe it other than that. He hadn’t jumped, he’d just kinda… That. Nodded at her… They called it a ‘head’ for a reason, she guessed.

“You don’t really talk all that much, do you?”

A waggle from side-to-side answered that question more than adequately. Cock-language was pretty expressive… She’d learned something today.

“That was, uh, kind of a dumb question once I think about it. Not supposed to ask personal questions in a glory hole. That’s a rule.” If it wasn’t it should be. She hadn’t even done anything yet and she was already making a fool of herself. “I mean… I’m sorry about last time. That must have been frustrating.”

The ‘silence’ was telling.

“You came all the way here, expecting something to happen and got nothing from it last time. That was kind of a bitch move.” Looking at her tit pic had made her _wince_. She hadn’t even let the camera focus. Ouch, Drunk Vicky. Ouch. “Just…” An open hand went out to lightly pat the shaft, making it bob.“Keep doing what you’re doing, alright?”

Victoria started it off with a stroke. With a still open hand over smooth skin for the sake of getting a feel for what she had to work with. This wasn’t the first time she’d handled a penis like she was going to - but this was something else; Just hyping herself up and getting acquainted, a two-for-one special.

It was like she was petting a cat. One of those smooth, hairless ones… Probably. She’d never actually seen one of those in real life, let alone felt one; it wasn’t actually like that, other than it being smooth and with not a hair to be seen.

If a cat had had this many veins popping out over its skin, she’d have had Amy taking a look at it before it had a chance to explode; Smooth on the outside, all steel in. A quick squeeze between thumb and forefinger, gentle, found not even an inch of give. Her thumb nudging a vein had it visibly _squirming_ under her digit before she let go, letting it snap back smugly into place.

This erection was probably in the BBPD’s concealed weapon’s database somewhere. She wouldn’t doubt it in the slightest.

Her thoughts were interrupted, confirmed when the whole mass jumped in her hand. Not twitched. Not pulsed. _Jumped_ into her palm with a solid _thwack_ like it had been forced from a springboard.

She hadn’t been trying that hard to stay where she was...but her fingers moved. Her hand moved. Her whole fucking _arm_ moved under the force. She’d blocked **_haymakers_** that hadn’t hit with that much force behind them.

Victoria giggled anxiously and ignored the sweat that had just popped up at the back of her neck. “I…alright. Whoa.” She laughed again. More sweat at her collarbone. “You ever think of giving the guys at that Guinness place a call? You’ve gotta be breaking some kind of record here.”

Another stroke. Down, up. Another throb, though this time one that Vicky was ready for...and something new. That dot from before, a drop of good that she got to see in real-time as it formed a wobbling bead at the crown; staggeringly dense and thick when it eventually got too heavy and formed a jittering, shiny string.

“Uh.”

That string eventually broke and what fell hit the ground like a water balloon. A tiny, tiny water balloon. Splat. Pop. Less water, more watered down glue. That was new. Outside of her experience, definitely. When Dean started leaking pre, it meant things were going well. That she was doing something right - but Dean...uhm… He leaked. Made little dribbles. Normal. Manageable. You could wipe them up with a tissue when you were done and needed to clean up.

“Uhm…”

As another drop hit the floor to add itself to the mess, Vicky found herself wishing for paper towels. A whole roll, just to be safe.

“Clean up must be a hassle, huh?”

Or a pressure washer. Or that.

Keeping an eye out for each new drop, Vicky continued stroking them off. Up and down, down and up, a mesmerizing process. By what she got out of it and what they did… The movements of their skin, moving and creasing under her fingers as she slid down to the base. The slide back up, drawing yet another rope of goo more often than not like she was working the world’s lewdest pump.

Vicky sucked in a breath and caught her lower lip in between her teeth as she came to a realization a minute or two into their happy little jerking session.

This was just foreplay. This was just advanced teasing and she had a long way to go still if she wanted to make this work. Guys didn’t exactly lose it when all they were getting was a soft handle...not unless there was a lot more build-up than just some awkward small talk and a grainy tit pic anyway; she was pretty sure that she wasn’t playing with a premature ejaculator here.

… Was this the part where she puts her mouth on it?

Yes. No. No… Not yet. Maybe? No.

That was definitely a no, even if she’d tried fake yawning just now to test how far she could stretch her jaw; it would - maybe - fit. Possibly. The head was the squishiest bit, right, seeing as it was made for prying open small holes?

Vicky shook her head to clear it and shelved that thought for later. There was such a thing as too much escalation and, trying to introduce her tonsils to a baseball bat was it… Her hands were going to see some more work it seemed.

On the next stroke, she slipped up a little further up. Right over the ridge of the glans to swipe a hand across the head; sliding over where the latest drop was before it fell to the ground to give her palm a good, shiny coat.

That level of escalation was much...not safe, but safer. More satisfying. The extra lube didn’t hurt her at all, and it finally got a noise out of the mystery holder of the heaving dong she was servicing; a sigh. A moan. Both?

It wasn’t as deep as she was expecting, but it was definitely there… All that manliness had to have come from somewhere. It was a decent trade...and she’d got something out of them. That was a victory all its own.

That was _exciting_. It always was, victory. She’d never been the type to enjoy an impassive partner in the first place and just knowing that she’d been able to pull a reaction of this - _behemoth_ \- was a hell of a turn on.

“I got you now, guy. I fucking got you.”

It was enough to make her that littlest bit more comfortable with what she was doing. More confident now that she’d put a dent in her sorta partner’s wall of silence. She moved faster. Her grip firmed up, probably a touch more than was actually safe. Super strength had a lot of benefits, but needing to be delicate with her partners was a definite downside; this guy didn’t even seem to care. In fact, the extra pressure just drew out another noise, an almost imperceptible murmur hidden under a soft curse and a grunt.

Big _and_ tough. It was either one or the other. Nice to see someone with both for once.

It was really moving in her hands now, dancing to her tune. Pulsing with the rhythm of a furious heartbeat, bucking up and against her grip with every pump. Those fat balls of theirs, dangling way down below were reacting too, jumping up into the base of the mystery man’s shaft to turn the flow of pre from an opened tap into a river.

She knew the signs for when someone was close. That was it. Her sudden switch from slow to fast had caught them out.

Vicky couldn’t help but grin to herself, breaths coming hard and fast from her nose as her heart hammered in her chest and the moment went straight to her head; They didn’t seem like they were going to last much longer. She needed a finale. A strong finisher.

She needed to hit it _big._

Half a dozen reasons raced through her mind on why that was a bad idea. Twice that told her why that was a good one. Vicky shoved them all to the side, good and bad, as she leaned forward, bent the tip in her direction and gave it a kiss. A big, wet kiss right on their urethra. A real lip-smacker, her tongue dipping out to give the lining of that slit a quick trace (salty-sweet) before turning it back and away from her face.

The sudden, furious jolt against her fingers proved that had been the right thing to do. Without a doubt.

Vicky had just barely been able to move her head, and lips, to the side before a rope of cum that could have filled a _soda bottle_ shot across the room and splattered against the far side of the stall.

Her mouth as good as attached to the shaft, eyes unblinking and hand still jerking, moving away from the up-close show of a door getting painted white didn't even cross her mind… Vicky was in shock. She couldn’t have moved away if she’d wanted to. She wasn’t sure she did.

Whether she’d wanted to move or not, the point was moot. What ifs didn’t matter. What was happening right then did...and it was just...unbelievable.

The next shot wasn't any smaller. Neither did it fall short of the first, the _thrum_ of another shot being fired something she could feel through her teeth; a new layer of what she could only call jelly striking the stall door with all the force of a hammer; there was rebound. A musky, cludgy spray that fanned out across the floor in a foot-wide, panty-wetting cone.

It was - terrifying. Horrifying. Intimidating as all hell...and one of the most erotic things she’d ever seen in her entire life.

Vicky just sat for a moment. Stared. Watched it peter out with one last spurt across the floor that any normal man would have been proud of before finally remembering that she was still lipping at the organ that had made all that mess; Lightly sucking at the skin even as she pulled away with a pop and a perfect imprint of her lips left behind in cherry lipstick.

Essentially on autopilot, Vicky reached out to grab a nearby paper towel and cleaned the pre off of her lips while pawing at her phone. She nearly, _nearly_ ran her tongue around her lips first, but - she wasn’t ready for that right then. Not with that taste she’d already had a cloying weight at the back of her throat.

There was a new pic every second. Shutter clicks at every angle as she slowly and methodically cleaned off her new friend’s tool, wiping away any and every trace of fluid she could find. Spit, pre, actual cum… Not the lipstick though. Not the lipstick.

It was a reminder that she got what she came for. That she’d won. He’d be taking that home as a souvenir to remember her by.

She had her own trophies. Her own memories to think back on.

“That was a hell of a thing, huh? Fun, right?” Victoria prodded, an undeniable current of pride in her voice as she took flight and began to drift away...and everything smelled of sandalwood. Sandalwood and that odd _bite_. “Sorry for being such a bitch last time.” She looked back over her shoulder and gave them a wave...for some reason. “Later.”

Awkwardness didn’t take long to rush back in. It didn’t take long for her to find the door and vanish into the night either.

That had...happened. They’d happened. It had been a thing.

She had some feelings to work through. And other things...like how she was leaking through her white and lacies and her sock drawer was calling her. Yang was just going to have to go without her company tonight.

She’d understand. Yang was cool like that.

==========

“That...was a mistake,” I blinked, forcing away the afterglow and the quickly vanishing pain of a too-rough handie… Just like Neo used to give. Nostalgia was a bitch. “I’ve made a mistake.”

Where had I gone wrong? Who knew? Not me.

  
**_This was totally not my fault._ **


	5. The New Dragon: New Year's Orientation 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Worm/Parahumans cross with YDCT. This one was done on New Years of last Year!
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/19043482/chapters/45231835
> 
> Read this (and the first chapter of this thing we've got) to get an idea of what's going on!

**_February 10th, 2010_**  
  
  
Being gangsta ain’t easy.  
  
I forget who'd said that or what the context was, but they’d had it about right. I don’t know anything about the lower echelons of my friendly little neighborhood organization, seeing as I was running this bitch, so I only had my own experiences to work with here… My experiences, being mine, took priority over any others. That was how this fucking gig worked.  
  
Benefits of being the top gangstar right there.  
  
… So. Right. Lung hadn’t just been a piece of shit in vaguely lizard form. Lung had been a piece of shit in vaguely lizard form that had been pretty much incapable of doing **_paperwork_**. Of adding one-and-one to make **_two_** instead of sucking his territory dry like a brain-damaged tick; taxes for fucking everything.  
  
There was a metaphor there that made sense. Something about pies and bigger slices and waiting. I don’t fucking know. What I did know is that eating the whole fucking pie just made you a fatass, left everyone hungry, and made it so that people wouldn’t be bringing any more pie to the party than they had to.  
  
The pie was money, to be clear, and the party was capitalism. More money among your customers breeds more money. Less money among your customers breeds less money. Sustainability was the name. It wasn’t all that hard to figure out...as long as you weren’t a shortsighted jackass, looking to make as much money as possible in the shortest amount of time anyway.  
  
 ** _Jacques._**  
  
… I swore he (Lung at the moment) was just slapping these taxes on people for the hell of it, or just letting people do it in his name. Same shit in the end, really. As the leader, he was sort of expected to keep on top of this nonsense, keeping people from talking shit and doing things with his name backing them up. Even _Raven_ knew that much about how to be a leader...and now I felt ill for thinking it.  
  
I wasn't going to cough up blood or something stupid like that, but it was a damned near thing.  
  
Anyway, it didn’t really matter what the taxes were for and what the people in his territory were meant to receive in return. His promises and agreements hadn’t been worth a cummy sock in a landfill. If he’d ever gotten out of his Lazy Boy to do something that wasn’t ordering Oni Lee around in the month before I’d murdered him, I had no fucking clue. Nor did anyone else in my employment.  
  
He’d left me all this paperwork. A stack half as tall as I was… He’d deserved worse than what I’d done to him, truly.  
  
Lung had died in terrible pain.  
  
“Boss?”  
  
“Yes?” I hummed, the relief I felt from this minor distraction hidden in the very simple act that was me taking off a pair of reading glasses; I didn’t need them, but I thought they made me look smart. That was important, looking smart. “What is it? Can’t you see I’m busy?”  
  
Not so busy that I wouldn’t listen, of course, but it wasn’t as if I could say it.  
  
“The uh - the guys. You know how you asked for us to be on the lookout for a blonde girl? Homeless?” He (I had no idea who _he_ was) started, a line of sweat dripping down his shaved bald brow and down to his chin as the ‘weight’ of standing in my presence came down on him like a hammer… A result of something that had been sadly necessary. “Mouthy? Kind of a bitch?”  
  
Not all of the ABB had been too happy about the new management. The resulting restructuring and resource management courses hadn’t been entirely - pleasant; faith in me would come later. Fear would fade...but not too much.  
  
Love always needed just a _touch_.  
  
“I might know some things about that, yes.” I placed my pen down. He twitched...and didn’t duck for cover. Good. “I’m guessing you found someone like that?”  
  
“On the Boardwalk. She got caught pickpocketing someone fancy and, uh, Boardwalk security was about to have a word with her out back.” He nodded, hands behind his back and shoulders tense as he tried to be subtle about watching my arms. “Our boys lifted her before-”  
  
I waved a hand to shut him up. The Enforcers were just another gang at the end of the day, just one that got paid by people with more cars than fingers. We weren’t all that different and I wasn’t an idiot. “Yeah, yeah. I know what they were going to do. I don’t need a history lesson.” I cocked my head some. “You got her here?”  
  
He licked his lips and nodded...and I was reminded that I was going to have to set up a dental plan for these people at some point. Why was his tongue _white_? Gross.  
  
“I’d like to see her then. Immediately.” I pushed the paperwork to the side, leaving my line of sight completely clear along with my concerns about possible tongue cancer in my employees. “Push her in here and leave. Go hit the gym.” I flicked my fingers at him, at the general direction of his legs. “Start doing leg day before I sic Jun on you.”  
  
He couldn’t have left fast enough. Blondie might as well have been tossed through my door for all the care they gave her, leaving her sprawled across the floor with a squawk as the door behind her slammed to a close.  
  
It was all very efficient. Very quick. If only he wasn’t slacking off, maybe he’d get somewhere someday… Oh, well.  
  
Time for orientation.  
  
“Hello, cutie-pie. Sweetie. Pudding. Isn’t today just a beautiful day? I think so.” I shifted my tone from ‘hardass boss’ to ‘bestest friend you ever had’ like I’d just flicked a switch. My smile grew and grew _sharp_ as grungy looking ragamuffin on my carpet raised her scraggly-haired head to stare at me with comically wide green eyes. “Making new friends makes every day beautiful.”  
  
She stared at me. Long. Hard. Silent… Speechless, her jaw slack as her eyes flicked from me to the paperwork pile, then back to me.  
  
She knew what was up. Good. No beating around the bush then.  
  
“Welcome to the Dragons, Lisa Wilbourn,” I purred, a huge weight lifted off my back even as I took to my feet. “Your new desk will be here by tomorrow morning. Your chair by the afternoon.” My smile grew even wider, grew until it started to hurt. “Would you prefer a secretary outfit, a cape costume, or both?”  
  
“Oh, **_hell_** no.”  
  
“Both it is.”  
  
She’d come around. Everyone did sooner or later.  
  
 **I was me after all.**  
  
==========  
  
 ** _December 31st, 2010_**  
  
  
“I hate you,” Lisa spat out, meaning every word as she blinked the sweat out of her eyes. Sweat. All the sweat. Why was there so much _sweat_? “I fucking hate you so, so much.”  
  
She wasn’t kidding this time. Lisa was totally serious. It felt like every part of her was on fire, like her bones had cracked and fallen into themselves like a heap of cheap pottery; She’d been lying in a puddle of her own juices for the last five minutes now and had no plans on changing that anytime soon.  
  
This wasn’t the first time she’d ended up as a crumpled heap on the rubber mat of Yang’s personal gym. Not the first. Not the last... There was a method to her madness, damn it. As long as she stayed here, Yang couldn’t make her do anything. There was the method. Genius.  
  
“That isn’t hate. You don’t know what real hate is,” Yang, still as fresh and bright as a fucking daisy as she waggled a finger in front of Lisa’s nose, admonished her. If she even noticed that Lisa had tried to bite her finger when the other girl made to do so, she didn’t show it… Lisa hadn’t even gotten close. “That’s just the feeling of weakness leaving the body. Of strength coming around to fill the vacuum and turn you into the temple you were always meant to be.”  
  
Sometimes, Lisa couldn’t tell if Yang was serious about the shit that came out of her mouth or not. Seeing as her power was ‘Sherlock Holmes’ on meth, that said something. Mostly how full of _shit_ Yang was, but something.  
  
Damn her. Damn her to heck.  
  
Lisa groaned. “I thought that was pain…” She raised an arm, then let it drop as soon as it started complaining. Three hours of exercise had taken its toll. Death. It called for her. “Oh, Christ, let me die...”  
  
At least she’d have her money when she went. It was in her will and everything, as well as the plans for the boobytrap she wanted on the lid. It really was the little things that mattered.  
  
“The removal of weakness has many expressions, honeybunch… It's a lot like evicting a deadbeat renter.” The distinctive _thud_ of a hundred pound curling weight being gently dropped to the ground punctuated this statement with finality. “If it can rip the microwave out of the wall, it's going to. The cabinets too.” She snorted in that way she did whenever she was about to switch to a tangent. “Did I ever tell you that this gives me deja vu?”  
  
Lisa pulled at the collar of her top and started flapping it like she was a hummingbird. Bliss. “All the time.”  
  
“And here’s another.” Yang flopped down next to her with an even louder thump than her equipment had made. “I guess I just have a thing for whipping blonde puffballs into shape.”  
  
Lisa had known Yang, her boss, for the better part of a year now. The better part of a painful, frustrating year full of paperwork, administration and leg days; Yang had never once explained what she’d meant by that. There was little else that could piss Lisa off more and Yang _knew it_.  
  
Lisa knew that they knew. They knew that Lisa knew that they knew. The amount of shits either of them could have given couldn’t possibly have been any less.  
  
Everytime Yang brought up her oh-so-mysterious past, she was feeding Lisa a piece to a mystery. A piece of information as to where she’d come from. As to where her power came from. As to how her body was a machine that Mother Nature couldn’t have ever hoped to build on its own.  
  
Lisa was no Panacea, but she didn’t need to be to see that her employer’s form was the closest thing to perfect as anything could ever be...and, no. That wasn’t a comment on her shape. It was just...her being _her_. That _feeling_ of power and how her every cell worked with every other cell in beyond perfect harmony... That she wasn’t a Parahuman either just compounded it. Until she figured that out ( _she had to_ ), she was stuck with the Dragons. Stuck with Yang...and Yang knew it.  
  
That smug bitch.  
  
“I never finished my work there though. Shame,” Yang continued to tease her ( _that bitch_ ) with yet another tidbit that her power couldn’t help but scramble after like a dog with a ball. “The rest of my team never really had the patience to take care of a hopeless case.”  
  
Lisa suddenly had the strength to flop over on her side, her arm flopping usefully as it came down across Yang’s cheek with an anemic slap; a victory. It didn’t matter that Yang had let it happen. That had felt _good_. “Blow me, you living bundle of pool floaties.”  
  
Yang blinked, stunned. “Pool floaties?” She repeated what she’d just said, silently. “I’ve never heard that one before. That’s new.”  
  
Lisa had just made it up. It better be new.  
  
“You - I shouldn’t have to explain shit. You’re made out of curves. Circles. Fucking _ovals._ ” Lisa rolled over the rest of the way with a pained hiss, bringing her other hand around and onto Yang’s flawless brick of a forehead. Once again, it was worth it. “You fill out a cocktail dress like a butcher fills an overstuffed sausage casing, you musclebound blowup doll.”  
  
“... Those are some seriously mixed vibes you’re giving me here. Your messages are all over the place.” Yang had Lisa by one of her wrists with a move that the Thinker was entirely unable to follow… Entirely. She hadn’t blinked. The speeds involved had just completely passed her by. “Are you insulting me? Are you jealous?”  
  
… Was she that easy to read?  
  
“Jealous of what?” Lisa squirmed. Squirmed, but didn’t pull away when Yang’s lips crossed over her fingers. Squirmed as much as she could in her condition and narrowed her eyes at the playfully guileless look thrown in her direction when the much bigger blonde laid a hand on her waist, just above her hip. “What would I have to be jealous about?”  
  
Yang’s touch was - distracting. Like a _brand_. So much heat... Almost too much. More than enough to make her start sweating again just by being near. Another mystery. Another thing for her to fixate on and never get an answer for.  
  
Motherfucker.  
  
“That’s a good question. What would you have to be jealous about? What a riddle.” Yang murmured into the back of Lisa’s hard, heated breath washing over her knuckles and into her face; So many different chemicals. All of them harmless as they were, a fake mint, a step away from lethal at any moment. Deathly sweet. “What does it have in its pocketses?”  
  
… What? What was she supposed to get from **_that_**? Her power, chasing after that ball, felt like it had just hit a wall. With its face. Like it had been completely stymied by the utter _nonsense_ in that statement and had to consider the question seriously.  
  
 _What does its have in its pocketses?_ Had that been a sex joke? Or had that just been Yang being Yang? … What was she saying? A sex joke would have _been_ Yang being Yang.  
  
“Damn it, Yang.” Lisa couldn’t help but flush in a mix of anger and embarrassment when Yang gently pulled her close, finishing the smaller girl’s roll for her so that she was laid out on top. Lisa couldn’t even actually move or fight back in any meaningful way as she was left staring at the ceiling, her head planted square between the pillowy mountains that Yang called a chest. “Why are you so goddamn _weird_?”  
  
Why couldn’t she take anything _seriously_? Why couldn’t she just...what was up with her and Glory Girl? Why wouldn’t Yang talk about it? What did that mean for her and Yang and whatever - this - was?  
  
Why did she even **_care_**?  
  
“Questions. You’ve got a lot of questions today... Do you really think this is the time to be asking questions?” Yang rubbed her chin against the top of Lisa’s head with a happy little sigh. “Is that what you really want right now?”  
  
An anticipatory shiver (damn it, pavlov) ran down Lisa’s body from head to toe as a pair of fingers ‘walked’ across her stomach. A stomach that was no longer nearly as soft as it used to be, now little more than outwardly cute padding over a wall of muscle… All of her was like that now. Soft as a marshmallow on the outside, tough as nails on the inside.  
  
Her butt. Her arms, legs, waist and chest… When she’d accused Yang of being all curves and no lines, she’d been just a _little_ hypocritical. Just a little. Yang was on another level altogether. Whatever training Yang had been given, it came with an eerie precision when it came to getting the results you wanted from a workout and a good dietary plan...and Yang had gotten exactly what she’d wanted.  
  
There was no way Lisa’s new body was a mistake.  
  
She’d known what was coming when she’d refused the first four training plans for being too hard. How could she not when she had the world’s greatest detective in her head…? Anything to get out of an eternity on the weight bench had been the plan at the time, the idea that she’d get out of this one as well something she’d expected.  
  
That hadn’t happened though. Lisa wouldn’t have been here, like this, if it had. The Lisa from a year ago wouldn’t have been able to recognize herself as she was now... They might as well have been two different people for all it mattered.  
  
One of them had been a homeless idiot with a handful of stolen credit cards that had just been reported missing and a dream. The other one was the right hand woman of the most powerful (unofficially) person in the city with a full house of black plastic in her handbag.  
  
Lisa knew who she’d rather be.  
  
Months had gone by. She’d gotten - comfortable - with what she’d have to do to keep herself in the way she was accustomed to and who she had to do it for... Lisa had _grown_ to fit into the burnt-orange outfit that made her ‘The Fox’ instead of the other way around; became a kevlar and spandex wet dream that could, very literally, crush a man’s skull in between their thighs...or wrap real tight around a certain Sun Dragon’s head as they tongued her silly.  
  
Lisa might not have been gay, but she was more than able to appreciate art when she saw it. Seeing it for a couple of months had led to her experiencing it and… It had all just sort of - gone on from there.  
  
She was young and had loads of money. Experimentation was the ‘in’ thing these days… When the girl you were sorta fucking had a dick as long as your forearm, you couldn’t get more experimental than that… That sounded kind of weird when Lisa thought of it that way, but she wasn’t entirely up to quibbling with the person that paid her bills about matters of gender and sex.  
  
Yang being a girl, as she insisted on with that ineffable cheer she was known for, was as good a descriptor as any she supposed. It wasn’t like Lisa could think of one better...and, right now, that girl might as well have had their hand up her bubbly rear; Right up there to the elbow, playing her like a sock-puppet.  
  
“You worked so hard today. Worked those poor hands and feet of yours to the bone. Why are you worrying?” Yang crooned, those walking fingers making their wandering way around and south of Lisa’s stomach in random turns. “Sit back. Relax. Just let mama Yang take all that stress away.”  
  
She knew Lisa the same way Lisa knew other people. It meant exactly what it meant. The strange little details of her life and what yanked the pull cord of her libido, all through proximity and familiarity...but that didn’t mean that Lisa couldn’t say what was up when she needed to.  
  
‘When’ was always.  
  
“You’re so fucking-.” Lisa’s breath hitched, coming out as a pathetic wheeze when Yang gave up all pretense of what she was after and cupped Lisa’s crotch; slender fingers digging gently into bright-pink lycra and the soft, wet vulva beneath. “Weird.”  
  
Always.  
  
“I know what you like, you mean.” Yang shifted under Lisa’s body with a chuckle, propping the tired girl’s lower half up by popping her hips. Lisa’s legs, just as weak as the rest of her, flopped to either side and against Yang’s outer thighs in the process; defenseless. “You can call me mommy if you want. I won’t mind.”  
  
 _Always_.  
  
“I am not calling you _mommy_ ,” Lisa snapped out, the words filled with more energy than she’d had since the start of the day’s torture session. The familiar feeling of clothing getting stretched out as Yang’s other hand slipped into her shorts added to the angry heat in her chest. “And I just got these fitted, you ass!”  
  
“I don’t see why you’d need them. I don’t see why you got them at all. This isn’t exactly something new,” Yang dismissed her complaints with a two-pronged attack, her fingers working from inside and out that made Lisa’s cheek twitch and clench her jaw. With that casual egoism that hung around her like a cloud. “I’m starting to think that you _like_ when I ruin your clothes.”  
  
Lisa wet her lips and focused on breathing. Not speaking. Gathering her thoughts for the blistering salvo that would put Yang in her place while Yang focused on making sure that never happened by throwing distraction after distraction in the way… All it took was a little pressure on Lisa’s thigh to pull one of her pussy lips to the side, leaving her open to the metronome-like poking and probing of Yang’s fingers at her hole.  
  
One, two, three. Three, two, one. Ring, middle, index...it was just teasing. Just them taking a dip. Nothing further than a fingertip while Yang’s palm ground itself into the top of her slit, pulling her clit out from under its hood with the first roll and adding to the tension with the other nine.  
  
Yang was a big believer in foreplay. Huge. Languid, steady, enough to keep her off her game but not nearly enough to get her to cum on its own as she - tested - Lisa’s body by standards only she knew. Not even Lisa’s power was sure what they were, the addition of ‘Aura’ to the equation leaving things foggy and unclear.  
  
That happened a lot. That was how she was here at all, free to do what she wanted (or have things done to her) while her power busied herself with crap that didn’t involve how much bacteria was under her right pinky nail and the price of sausage... She’d only realized just how much she’d missed that freedom when she’d found it again.  
  
Lisa knew what the point of Yang’s actions were though… It wasn’t a secret. Yang hadn’t even bothered tried to hide what she was doing or why she was doing it when Lisa had asked.  
  
Yang didn’t think that Lisa could handle her. She was seriously worried that if she ever went all out, she’d snap Lisa as easily as most people would break a twig… Lisa didn't mind knowing that. Knowing the reason as to why Yang hadn't tried stretching her out like a cheap condom in the five months since they'd started 'fucking' made Lisa all warm inside.  
  
It was nice to know that somebody cared. That they cared enough to put their own satisfaction on hold for her sake...it was nice. Really nice.  
  
What got to her was that Victoria fucking Dallon didn't rate the same worry.  
  
Don't get her wrong. Lisa couldn't be bothered to pretend she gave a shit about how well the flying brick could take a dicking. What got to her was that, in Yang’s subconscious, there was no _reason_ to worry about if Victoria could _take_ that dicking. Not like Lisa. Not like poor, poor Lisa.  
  
That pissed Lisa right the fuck off. This was top tier pissed. Unheard of levels of pissed. There were things that pissed her off more, but not much.  
  
 ** _She was super fucking pissed._**  
  
Lisa had been busting her ass for months. For actual _months_. Jumping, running, lifting and doing more stretches than an Indian yogi on a bender and it all meant nothing when compared to a bad Alexandria knockoff. It didn’t fucking _matter_ if Yang had never seriously considered (it was always at the back of her head, like an itch she was ignoring) having sex with the New Wave cape, not from where she was sitting.  
  
This was the healthiest she’d ever been in her life, healthier than most people ever were or would ever be, and Yang _still_ thought that all Lisa was good for was sucking her off. Why wouldn’t she be angry?  
  
Why wouldn’t she be _jealous_? … Also, just as a reminder for any Thinkers out there that weren’t her, she wasn’t gay. She was _experimental._  
  
Semantics were the very best sort of antics. Yang’s whole deal only made it all the sweeter.  
  
“I don’t want to do this on the floor.” Lisa finally grasped the straws she’d been reaching for with all the gratefulness of someone that had just found an abandoned lifeboat while at sea. “I don’t want to be all gross and sweaty and sore like this when you get me to pop.” She wriggled stubbornly, a jittering hiss slipping from between her lips when a trio of wet digits moved up to give the still-swelling bundle of nerves there an enthusiastically soppy ‘hello’; she wouldn’t be denied. “Get me a hot shower, a cold drink, and I’ll _think_ about keeping this going, capiche?”  
  
That got through that she was serious to Yang if nothing else did. Lisa couldn’t even feel her _breathe._  
  
“... Huh. Alright. Not in the mood right now, huh? Say no more, sweetheart.” With another roll of her fingers that made Lisa’s hips jerk and wish her arms still worked like they should, Lisa’s shorts stopped begging for mercy with only a couple of stretch marks to show for it...and now she was in Yang’s lap. She still had a pair of Yang-brand earmuffs on, as was the usual, while Yang nuzzled her hair like the weirdo she was. “I’ve got the Princess Bride on Blu-Ray and a bucket of fried chicken when you crawl your broken carcass out of the shower~.”  
  
From horny-playful to just playful in no time flat.  
  
“I didn’t tell you to stop. Wait, I mean - shut up.” Lisa grimaced when Yang started laughing... That was one that was never coming back. “I kind of messed that up. Rain check? Say, after I can breathe without it hurting?”  
  
She could taste a little copper if she focused. You’d think that wouldn’t be a problem anymore, but… How any of Yang’s crew could do twice to three times as much and _live_ was beyond her.  
  
“We didn’t even do cardio today. You clearly need more cardio. Also, you weren’t having sex on the floor. You were having sex on _me_. There’s a difference.” Yang huffed like the good-natured bear of a woman she was. “Floors are straight and flat and dirty. I’m none of those things. You see the difference?”  
  
Lisa’s lips twitched as the customary response rose up in her throat, “what does straight even mean with you, Yang?”  
  
“It means whatever I say it does. I define myself. No one can define me but me. I am the captain and master of my own existence, lord of all I survey and Queen of my castle.” Yang nodded seriously. As seriously as she ever did, with not a hint of a joke behind her joking smile. “I am what I am.”  
  
Lisa arched an eyebrow at that and leaned back, her head disappearing further between Yang’s breast. “And when you apply me to that philosophy?”  
  
Yang’s chest rumbled in an almost-purr. “I’d be happy to be your master too, my pretty.”  
  
“... I walked right into that one, didn’t I?”  
  
Yang’s arms squeezed, lifting two of the last couple parts of her body that still had any actual _squish_ to them, making the smaller blonde catch her breath as she shot Yang a _look_. “Just a little. I won’t hold it against you though. All that blood of yours isn’t really being put to use in your brain right now, is it?”  
  
Lisa bit her lip as the teasing started anew, set back to an earlier stage but not one tiny bit less effective; Yang leaned in, nibbled on the side of her neck and made Lisa shiver.  
  
“You’re running hot right now,” the purple-eyed girl murmured before she pulled back and began disentangling herself from Lisa’s body, bringing Lisa up and onto her still weeping feet. “I can _smell_ it right through those shorts of yours.”  
  
Lisa sighed and ignored the thrill that shot through her at _that_. Not now. “So, what? You’re not satisfied with just being weird so you became a bloodhound?”  
  
“A bloodhound? Sure.” Yang stuck her tongue out, the seductive tone vanishing again from her voice. “And the only skirt I’m sniffing under is yours.”  
  
That had been a statement of fact. A declaration of intent, said with all the ease of someone talking about the weather. If there had been people around, Yang wouldn't have changed a thing about what she’d just said.  
  
What the **fuck**.  
  
“... You’re shameless.” Lisa found herself, for the first time in a long time, nearly speechless as what felt like boiling water crept up her collarbone and into her cheeks to turn them into a blotchy mess. She shouldn't be surprised but, somehow, Yang seemed to manage. “Just...just the worst.”  
  
“I never said otherwise.”  
  
“ _The worst._ ”  
  
Nearly...as near to speechless as she ever got. Lisa wouldn’t have been herself otherwise. Neither would Yang have been _herself_ if she hadn’t snickered her way down the hall with Lisa hanging on her arm like a stumbling drunk.  
  
… Lisa kind of regretted pushing that offer of a fingerbanging session off now. Oh well. Still plenty of daylight to burn. There was a shower to be had and maybe a massage if she could swing it.It wouldn’t be that hard. The talk about that power boost Yang could hand out though, before or after?  
  
That could be easier.


	6. The New Dragon: New Year's Orientation 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Worm/Parahumans cross with YDCT. This one was done on New Years of last Year! The second part!
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/19043482/chapters/45231835
> 
> Read this (and the first chapter of this thing we've got) to get an idea of what's going on!

  
**_January 5th, 2011_**  
  
  
After a long day at work, sometimes I liked to sit around. To veg out. Get myself a lay down. Turn on the TV and watch horror movies that would have gotten themselves a label of Felony-level contraband for being Grimm bait if ever shown in a theater… Sometimes, I like to have a stiff drink in my hand and some company when I do these things.  
  
“So. You and Glory Girl, huh?” The ice in Lisa’s glass rattled menacingly. “That’s a surprise that came out of nowhere.”  
  
Sometimes. Company was a tossup.  
  
“Oh, Christ, don’t give me that right now, Lisa, it's been a long day,” I groaned over my glass of iced tea, long; Even if I couldn’t get drunk, I liked the taste...and alcohol was always welcome in my belly. “You already know why I did what I did.”  
  
“Yeah. Yeah, I do.” Lisa took a long sip of her coffee. Long. Very long… Uncomfortably long. She wasn’t happy, not at all. “You should have left her to drown.”  
  
I didn’t need to be able to read minds to tell that wasn’t entirely metaphorical. That was actual _hate_ I heard there.  
  
“Once again, _Christ,_ Lisa _._ ” I gave a pleading look up real quick, then went back to my drink… If the Brothers were real, why not him? Nothing wrong with trying. “All she did was whack me off real quick before running away with her tail between her legs. It's not like we fucked.”  
  
I didn’t even want to imagine how Lisa would have reacted if we’d fucked. For someone that was so insistent that there was nothing between us other than business and a friends-with-benefits relationship, she sure as hell didn’t act like it… It was a polite fiction between us, and flimsy shield in this particular conversation.  
  
“Right, right. She just whacked you off. She just got you to give the nightshift an all-nighter cleaning the bathroom and left a little lipstick on your dick. Nothing wrong with that.” She snapped at me, resentment _dripping_ from every word. “What do you want me to say? That I’m proud of you? That I’m glad it all turned out alright? Because I’m fucking not.”  
  
A very flimsy shield; wet cardboard and politician promises.  
  
“The flying blimp that needs parahuman help to keep their legs from falling off thanks to disuse is totally ready for you. Totally and absolutely. She’s the only option out there for getting your rocks off with something that isn’t one of those industrial milking machines. Not like there’s a hot girl that lives in the room down the hall from you that’s been busting their ass and throwing their back out for your tacit approval and blessing or anything.” She paused, both for emphasis and for air. That had come out pretty quick. “Oh. Wait.”  
  
I took a pull from my glass, dropping the amount in it by half to hide my wince. When she said it like that, it sounded pretty bad. It wasn’t like that, but it sounded pretty bad… She knew it too. Lisa was just hurting; lashing out and I had to keep that in mind. “There’s extenuating circumstances there, Lisa. We went over this.”  
  
Being a Huntsman, even a bad one, wasn’t just workouts and training. That was just the surface, the stuff everyone knew about and looked damned good in the movies. That was what made my Specialists, the most trustworthy of my gang and the ones I kept the closest. A pinch of Aura, some muscle definition and a nice uniform and I had a core of ‘parahuman’ elites that could have kept up with a sort of talented first-year from Signal; a force-multiplier that stacked up real damn quick when even your basic bitch thugs were learning how to wall-jump and hold a gun.  
  
Yeah. Wall-jumping. That thing where video game characters kick off a wall, then another wall, then another wall until they hit the top? That was a thing people could do. People could do that without powers. Crazy, right?  
  
That got the Dragons a lot of recruits, the promise of getting ‘powers’ if they joined. Suckers.  
  
… Anyway... Being a Huntsman wasn’t just workouts and training and good PR. That was nice and all, but that wasn’t what made a Huntsman.  
  
What made a Huntsman was a strong **_self-image_**. How you saw yourself, how you felt about yourself, affected everything about you as soon as Aura came into play; Lisa had - problems. She still blamed herself for what happened to her brother and, even as her subconscious body issues were laid to rest, that was always there. That guilt.  
  
I didn’t want her, or her Semblance, turning out like what happened with my uncle. That would have been...not nice; That was a serious worry, even if it wasn’t as likely as it had been before I’d started working on her, lightening the weight on her soul just by being myself… No surprise there.  
  
Self-image was important. **_Passion_** was even more so. It didn’t matter what you were passionate about. The important part was that you had _something_ that you could fall back on, something that helped you be _you_.  
  
I wasn’t sure that Lisa had anything like that...and I didn’t think a good dicking would fix her, no matter how good. I had to think about things like this. This was some crap I had to deal with… How had Roman _done it_?  
  
… Better not to think on that. Roman was Roman. I was I. I wouldn’t be able to run a corporation for longer than a month before snapping and I knew it.  
  
“Yeah. We did. At Christmas. Last Christmas, which was barely two weeks ago. It didn’t take you long to twist the knife though, did it?” She sucked in a breath through her nose, mouth to cup without her taking a taste…and now I felt double bad. Great. “When am I going to be ready? Huh? When?”  
  
Hand swiping right across my face with another groan, my drink found itself on the side table at my side of the couch. Alone and forever unfinished until it eventually found its contents swirling down the kitchen drain like my hopes of a quiet evening as I began scooting my way down the couch. Hop, hop, hop… Lisa’s side eye could have melted steel, but here I was anyway. Hopping.  
  
“What are you doing?”  
  
Hop. “Nothing.” Hop.  
  
“Bullshit.” Lisa pulled her legs up and tucked them up against her chest. “I can see you.”  
  
“I can see you too.” Hop.  
  
“No. Fuck off.” She kicked out at me, her pink-socked actual foot falling short by a foot. “Whatever you’re planning, and I _know what_ you’re planning, it's not going to work.”  
  
“Do I look like the sort to make plans? Plans that _work_? You overestimate my intelligence, sweetie.” When she kicked me again, this time hitting me on the shoulder, it was hard enough to give a car a good dent that would need a little more than some elbow grease to pop out; The fox had some rabbit legs on her, all according to **plan** … HOP. “Tell me though, if I was planning something, which I’m not, what would I be planning?”  
  
“Why is this couch so goddamn _long_? Wait, that’s not the fucking problem!” Planting both feet against my side, she started stomping on me. “Stop it!”  
  
“That doesn’t sound like much of a plan.” Another hop from me, all gentle-like, and Lisa’s legs bent against my advance… Angry was good. Offended was good. Better than weepy. “That does sound like me though, not having much of a plan and all.”  
  
“You are just…” Lisa snarled something unintelligible as a tiny wave of foam slopped out onto her hand. “This cost me fifteen bucks!”  
  
“Fifteen? Were the sprinkles made of gold?” I had to ask, honestly aghast. We could both afford that much, easily, but _wow_. “I think you got ripped off.”  
  
“Oh, yeah, no, definitely. This wasn’t at all worth it. It's like I’m tasting the invisible hand of the free market with every sip.” Distraction successful, the focus of Lisa’s anger shifted a couple of steps to the left. “It's still the best coffee in town though, so-” That snarl of hers got twice as snarly as she realized she’d been had. “How do you do that, you bitch!?”  
  
A cock of the head. Affected cluelessness. Another hop. The plunger was pulled... If Lisa had been standing, that would have been a _really_ deep squat. “Do what?”  
  
Contact.  
  
That fifteen dollar coffee ended up all over my front with a flick of the wrist; Ice cubes and sprinkles (I hadn’t been _serious_!) and enough espresso to kill a mule splashed down the front of my t-shirt, my pants, and the fine fabric of my couch in stains that would never come out. A couple drops at my chin, another just under my eye...and, yeah, it actually tasted pretty good.  
  
My tongue darted out to get another taste...and help me come to a conclusion. It wasn’t a good one either. This wasn’t worth fifteen dollars. Not even close. I could have made this with ten minutes and the stuff in my kitchen. The only good thing I could say about this thing was that they’d cleaned the machine recently.  
  
Lisa stared at the empty plastic cup that had once held her drink, then chucked it at me. Right in the forehead. Bingo and bullseye. “Fuck!”  
  
“Yeah. That was kind of a bad idea. Kind of a waste. Kinda.” I lipped at my shirt and gave it a suck… I had to wonder why cotton had a taste. Lame… Hop. “You’ve still got some time before it dries and gets all gross though, if you’re quick.”  
  
Lisa opened her mouth, eyes lit up with an unholy rage - and went still. Her brows slowly went down to their normal places and the angry red began to bleed out of her features; Mouth closed, fists clenched tight, eyes darting everywhere as she _stared_ at me. As she tried to _read_ me.  
  
“I’m going to get all sticky. That’s fine though, I guess.” I sighed and reached for the hem of my shirt to pull it up, sending just about every ‘fuck me’ signal I could think of as I did. That what I’d done was shitty and that I felt bad about it and, maybe, I’d been wrong to treat her like a china doll… Shirt pulling was a very complicated language.“At least I’ll smell like french vanilla and chocolate shavings until I get to the shower. I’ve smelled like worse.”  
  
The silence continued to grow as I discarded my shirt. Expanded. Had little silence babies with a short hiatus when my top hit the coffee table with a _splat_ only to get right back to it with a vengeance...and, ew. It was in my _hair_ now _._  
  
The things I did to lighten the mood, I swear.  
  
“Oh my god, are you...” Lisa eventually seethed. “Are you trying to _seduce_ me right now? After all that? **_Really?_** ”  
  
“Of course not. I just took my shirt off because it was uncomfortable. I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I shrugged and Lisa couldn’t help but track what came with it; The best damn boobquake this side of Narwhal and a Panacea Special if she ever decided to take the kid gloves off… They were pretty great. “It's just us girls after all. Nothing to be ashamed of.”  
  
With the graceful ease of someone that had been put through a gymnastics routine lifelong ballet dancers would have balked at, Lisa swiveled her hips, pulled her feet off my shoulder and slid them under her rear to face me completely. No turned head, no averted eyes, heated rage and conflicted want locked up behind a pair of bottle green orbs. “I hate you.”  
  
“So I’ve heard.”  
  
“I hate you, so, so much.”  
  
“Right.”  
  
“Fuck you for being so fucking hot though,” she hissed before leaping at me with all of the power her knees could afford, toppling me as I let out a playfully terrified shriek. She could try to hurt me as much as she wanted, but it just wasn’t going to happen. “Fuck you!”  
  
“Oh no! Help! Help! Someone help!” The speech patterns of a southern belle, your stereotypical damsel in distress came easy to me. “My virtue is in danger! Oh, help!”  
  
“Shut up! Just shut up! Shut your goddamn mouth you goddamn cow!” Lisa climbed my body like she was climbing a cliff, hands looking for holds wherever they could get them as roughly as possible… Normally, I was at the other end of this sort of aggression. As in, I was the aggressor. This was - refreshing, to be honest. Not entirely my thing, but refreshing. “You aren’t going to ruin this! Not today!”  
  
Thumb and forefinger went across my smile like I was zipping a bag, a motion that was lost on Lisa as her fingers grabbed at my chest and them between her fingers like the cow she’d made me out to be; squeezing and pulling at them like they were a pair of stress balls as her face fell between them, nearly burying her head in a way that never failed to make me laugh when I saw it. Not that she was all that happy about said laugh, the nip at my right breast saying as much.  
  
For someone that kept saying they weren’t gay, that she ended up facefirst between my tits often enough for me to have a costumary reaction to it was...well. It made me doubt her claims a little… Whether there was a dick involved or not, boobs were boobs and Lisa sure enjoyed herself some feminine softness in her life; I was more than happy to give it to her anytime, anywhere she wanted it.  
  
It made her happy and, I have to say, I didn’t exactly mind it all that much either. I was more than just a dick on legs, you know? The girls needed a little attention from time to time too.  
  
I sighed and laid back, thought of Remnant with a self-satisfied grin firmly planted on my face as my fellow blonde’s hair slid through my fingers and she lapped at my skin like a desperate cat with a bowl of milk. A valley of quickly drying gourmet coffee more like, laced with my natural musk, but she was more than happy to drink it in all the same. Licking, sucking, pinching, twisting and biting at me even as my erection began to grow against her leg, separated from her by the thin material of my sweatpants.  
  
Her prize was right here. What she’d been fighting for, for the sake of her own pride, was snaking its way down her thigh… Even in the depths of her rage, she knew it was there. Knew, and showed it in the only way left to her right then.  
  
Aggression. Unthinking sexual aggression, her fingers digging into the flesh of my breasts until they were nearly swallowed up, just at the very edge of my Aura flaring up in response. Her pulling herself out from between my breasts to snatch up a stiff nipple between her lips, the look in her eyes just _daring_ me to say something, had me showing _teeth_ from how wide my smile became.  
  
No words were exchanged but, really, there was no need for them. I knew her well enough. She knew me well enough, and had powers to keep the wordless exchange between us clear.  
  
 _“I’m still mad at you. We still need to talk, but you’re on the right track.”_ Was Lisa’s end of things. _“I know you are. I’m sorry. Let’s make this a good one.”_ Was mine...in the barest sense. It was more complicated than that. Just the barest of brush strokes on a social tapestry as her wants overcame her anger for the moment.  
  
I made her a promise, one that she was going to collect on tonight before it had even started getting cold. Lisa was going to get what I owed her and that was that, come what may, hell or high water… Hell preferable, if I couldn’t pay up.  
  
Good thing I was a lady of my word and a payer of my debts, wasn’t it?  
  
With an almost audible noise, a noise that I could only call a _chomp_ with all the cartoon-like qualities it carried, Lisa clamped down onto my nipple with her teeth with all the force she could put into it; It was nostalgic, really, seeing my Aura flare like that thanks to a love bite… It got my motor running, shameful as that was; Lisa might have only got the general details out of that but she understood enough, judging from the growl coming from the back of her throat. A growl that carried over to me, causing my breath to hitch.  
  
It had been just a little, but I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t gotten anything out of it. That only served to encourage Lisa, which was fine. More than fine.  
  
After all, she was finally getting that pony that she’d always wanted... Of course I was more of a stallion in this little partnership, a clydesdale, but that mangled the simile. We couldn’t have that now, could we?  
  
I chuckled and cooed, my fingernails lightly scratching at her scalp as she introduced some tongue action to the mix, her tongue swirling around my areola as her cheeks hollowed out from the vacuum seal she’d made for herself...and I couldn’t help what was coming up in my throat, the words. How could I?  
  
“I’m sorry, babe. This milk truck is running dry. You’re going to have to go downtown if you’re looking for a topup.”  
  
I could get impatient when the mood struck me, just like everyone else... That little reminder that I wasn’t a quiet chew toy (and of her latent homosexuality) wasn’t exactly appreciated. If not for her currently gnawing on me, there’d have no doubt been an exclamation of just how straight she was. It wasn’t _not_ appreciated enough for her to stop, but it was definitely enough to annoy her. To remind her of what she’d been going for before she’d gotten lost neck-deep in my tits.  
  
If that’s where she wanted to stay after all of this, that was fine. This was good too. It was just that keeping the question of whether we were going to actually fuck or not up in the air like this was - oh goddamn it, that was the point, wasn’t it?  
  
The smug. It burns us.  
  
There were a couple of downsides to having a not-a-girlfriend that could pretty much read your mind and…that didn’t need explaining. The doghouse I’d get sent to could be a little bigger.  
  
Lisa’s eyes rolling under her lids in amused disgust was something that I could feel as if it were a physical thing. It might as well have been as it coincided with Lisa freeing a hand up from mauling at my chest to trail down my torso, fingers trailing along my abs like she was reading braille and didn’t want to forget a thing.  
  
Sometimes, powers only went so far when it came to ‘seeing is believing’; my abs were an _experience_. She lingered and, when she left, it was with palpable regret on her end. Not nearly enough regret to tuck her hand into the waistband of my pants, but just enough to give my ego a healthy boost.  
  
I was proud of what I had and had no illusions when it came to how good I got it. Sue me.  
  
Resigning myself to my couch’s future position as a writeoff with a laugh, I took the other end of my lower wear from her. Thumb and forefinger on elastic, moving as close to ‘in time’ with her to work them down with a pop of the hips to help them over the hump and let the boys off their leash; they couldn’t have come out faster if they’d been springloaded, my dick slapping wetly against my stomach with all the force of a pipe to the gut and my nuts bouncing in sympathy.  
  
Lisa, her mouth still full of tit, had stopped glaring at my face to glare _down_...if you could call it a glare at all. A dash of awe. A pinch of anxiety. A smidgen of annoyance… You’d think she’d have gotten used to the sight by now, seeing how we’d gotten to this point.  
  
She’d gotten pretty good at blowing bubbles over the last year. Make of that what you will.  
  
“It looks like you’re in luck.” There was a touch of stutter in my words as I tried not to choke on my giggles. “Ol’ Bessy is full up today, thick and creamy. Would you like it from the tap or in a bottle?”  
  
Lisa’s eyes went back to mine in a clear ‘what the fuck?’ movement.  
  
“What? Do you know how hard it is to be an inspiration for all the little boys and girls 24/7?” I shrugged and let a quiver run its course through my body when she gave me an interrogative poke where the shaft met the balls; oh baby, behave. “Not everything that comes out of my mouth is made of gold.”  
  
Lisa sighed, the sensation an odd one seeing as she was still pulling at a nipple like she’d never heard of a water fountain before… Had I said this was nice yet? Because this was nice. My last partner hadn’t been nearly so - attentive; Lisa wasn’t having any of that, thinking about other partners before her, even as a tangent and with her in a glowing light.  
  
She had one of my testicles in the palm of a dainty little hand, nails out and threatening to make this bull into a steer.  
  
Scary~...but...  
  
Pulling up the essence of every porn actress that had ever hit the screen, I gave her everything I had. A purr. A croon. A sultry plea to give it to me so good they’d have to make a whole new rating for the video we’d just made. “H-harder, baby.”  
  
I never could resist a leadup to a good joke.  
  
Lisa pulled her ball-squeezing mitts off of me like she’d just been burned, her mouth popping free of my breast with a short spray of spit and built up drool ( _thirsty_ ) so that she could sputter and choke on it with nothing to make it worse. Getting around her powers like that, actually shocking her and breaking the tension (that tension was _dead_ ), was always a treat. I’d stripped her of her power, snapped the spine of her frustration over my knee like so much dry kindling.  
  
Eyes watering, fist over a mouth that wasn’t sure whether it should turn up into a smile or if it should go back to trying to break my skin. She had nothing to distract her now. Her flow had tripped over a molehill and snapped its ankle...and now she was just _Lisa_. I was just _me._  
  
I liked Lisa. I liked me. This was a good thing.  
  
“You asshole,” she whispered through a quick swipe right of her sleeve across her face. “How do you do that? How do you _keep_ doing it?”  
  
“Practice. Talent. I’m not just a pretty face and a kickass body.” I gave her a wink and, with a kick of the legs, my sweatpants found itself sliding down a wall as my tone took a heavy turn back towards ‘sultry video slut’. “And you’re a real sucker for when it comes to the little things.”  
  
Subtext. It was all about the subtext with Lisa. All about how much _feeling_ I put into my words and actions, how much _thought_ I put into making myself clear. Lisa wanted something genuine. Something real...and here it was.  
  
 ** _I was I and nothing else_** **_but myself._**  
  
That was what everyone wanted, wasn’t it, at the end of the day?  
  
“I - I guess you aren’t.” Lisa tittered awkwardly and, suddenly, she was as playful as a puppy. A kitten. A puppy-kitten even, one that was hoping that we could put what had just happened behind us without comment, threats to my manhood included. Adorable. Cute. Adoracute was the word. “And I’m not that easy. Not even close.”  
  
“I like a challenge.” A flick of the wrist and a button on Lisa’s blouse came free with a soft _pop_. “I don’t think I’ll ever get bored.”  
  
How was that for subtext?  
  
“You… I… Son of a bitch. Fuck. Shit. Damn.” She clasped both hands in front of her face, took a deep breath and _boy_ did her face get real red, real quick. “I know you’re playing me right now but I - crap.”  
  
No time better than now to move things along, I think...was it weird that I was kind of sad that there weren’t going to be any bitemarks on me later? … Nah. I don’t think so.  
  
There was a little something to feeling _sore_...but, yes. Questions. Important questions.  
  
“Would you prefer to sit on my face for a start, or get right to riding the dragon before the momentum runs out?”  
  
My grin right could have blinded someone right then. It sure blinded Lisa, the turning of her head so she wouldn’t have to see the dazzling gleam of my teeth telling as much.  
  
A-wink.  
  
Lisa just about found herself airborne when a trio of fingers grazed her side, a squeak slipping out when I took advantage pull her over me like a blanket during the hangtime. Three fingers, another three buttons loose and she was straddling my hips in a raggedy old skirt, a plain white bra peeking through the gaps of her blouse; her mouth open, her eyes reflecting the border between wild and want as the smaller blonde’s breath came out hot and quick with excitement.  
  
If your girl didn’t enjoy a little manhandling, a little show and glamour, you weren’t doing it right.  
  
“One jump forward or one jump back. I simplified things for you.” An open-palmed grope of her bottom had her pushing back into that hand with a mewl. “Aren’t I just a big ol’ softy?”  
  
“Like a cactus patch, maybe.”  
  
And here came the tangent. Couldn’t have a conversation without at least one. “Can you imagine if I had spines? Like a cat?”  
  
Lisa choked on a startled laugh, our argument from before pushed to the side but not forgotten under a small wave of disgusted amusement. “This wouldn’t be happening at all if that was the case. I like you, you’re lots of fun, but not that much fun.”  
  
“I’ve heard that one before.” From where didn’t need to be said...just that Lisa wasn’t the only one I’d heard it from. You can probably guess how that turned out more often than not. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I can be very convincing.”  
  
“Sorry, not sorry. Humans only.” She sucked on her teeth and shook her head while lifting her skirt and giving it a flap, showing me a damp patch on her bra’s matching piece to go along with the sticky, slick wetness on my skin; Lisa might as well have waved a red flag at a bull, my nostrils flaring wide as I caught her scent and… That bloodhound comparison might have been more true than I’d thought. “For a given value of human.”  
  
Specieist or not, I appreciate the sentiment.  
  
“I’ll take that as a compliment. I think.” A quick poke of my tongue outside my mouth added some much needed moisture as she continued to flutter her skirt at me to amuse herself, teasing me and convincing my erection that ‘hard as steel’ wasn’t hard enough for the occasion. “You thinking of keeping the panties on?”  
  
“Uh… Maybe?” If Lisa had been on her feet she’d have rocked back on her heels. That hadn’t even occurred to her. “Do you want me to?”  
  
“It does have a little something to it. So why not?” The flat of my left hand came down on the cotton-covered part of her ass with a firm swat...and there were the lights. She got the idea now. “Seriously though. Come on, Lisa-honey,” I whined shamelessly even as I gave her booty another swat. “Make a decision. You’re killing me here.”  
  
That was it. That was the beginning of the end. Where everything _clicked_ for her and she decided one way or the other.  
  
“... _I’m_ killing me here. You think you know suspense?” Lisa said under her breath as she reached under her skirt to fiddle around with her panties with the jittery movements of a virgin that was about to get their v-card punched… That was good as affirmation right there as to where this was going. “I’m about to sit on my own forearm. How’s that for suspense?”  
  
Feeling that, for once, me speaking up wouldn’t help the situation any, I held my tongue. I’d done my part in working the tension out. Now all I had to do was nod. Nod and hum in agreement while Lisa talked herself up like I wasn’t even there and walked back on my body with her knees.  
  
Her running into my cock with her butt didn’t even register as an obstacle to her. She just kept on going, pushing it down with her weight and making me shiver while doing it. Warm. Soft. The cotton of her skirt and underwear giving way to the alluring squish of her snatch leaving a trail of lubricant on the top of my shaft from middle to tip.  
  
If that had felt good for me, Lisa had it worse. Much. She’d let out a single grunt during that move, but her shoulders were shaking like she’d just walked out of a freezer anyway… This was a little out of her comfort zone.  
  
Just a little.  
  
“I’ve already got the important parts out of the way,” Lisa said to herself more than me, checking off a mental list. “I’m on the pill, it's a safe day, the person I’m having sex with won’t cause me to forcibly ovulate anyway... _and they’re going to stay perfectly still as I screw myself silly on their dick._ ” She looked up for the first time in relative ages, eyes wide with barely contained anxiety. “Alright?”  
  
I nodded.  
  
“Perfectly. Still. No touchy. No dragony bits. No fire hair. Nothing.”  
  
I gave her another nod and, slowly, put my hands above my head. Way, way above my head. As far away from her as possible without getting rid of them entirely, as good as it was going to get; her hands came down on my shoulders. Dug into them hard, hard enough to put dents in one of the softer metals as she sucked in a steady breath. Then another for her nerves as the head of my dick made contact with the (mostly) untouched line between her legs, the barest hint of fabric grazing my crown.  
  
Her skirt having fallen over the greater part of the action brought a magic trick to mind. Now you see it, now you don’t being the general gist...and it was doing it for me. That, and how Lisa’s hair had fallen over her face like a curtain as she began the process that was taking a seat. The long, tortuous process of fitting something a great deal larger than a finger in her snatch.  
  
Thankfully, her hymen had gone the way of the dodo months ago. After the first time doing the splits, it had been all over. True story. Whoever said exercise was useless had no idea what they were talking about.  
  
She added pressure. More pressure. Yet more pressure without a stop in between, her having fit me directly against her stubborn entrance the only thing keeping me from slipping away like a bar of soap in a too tight grip; Me making a tentative motion in her direction, just to hold myself still for her, had her hissing at me like a pissed off cat, showing that she was more than set on doing this herself.  
  
“Should have bought a fucking dildo. One of those horse ones or something. Overachieve for the real thing before taking the test. This is just-” Lisa gnashed her teeth as a bubble, a mix of my pre and her arousal, popped just behind my glans with a tiny _click_...it was a very distinctive feeling. A very distinctive sound. “The rest of you is magic, why isn’t this?”  
  
My hands opened in the closest thing to an ‘I don’t know’ gesture that I could pull together right then. “Jamming it in tends to work...and relaxing.”  
  
Lisa looked up at me and several strands of hair instantly stuck themselves to her forehead, coated in sweat. “Relax?”  
  
“Relax.”  
  
Lisa stared at me for a while before letting out a sigh, tension visibly leaving her body through force. Not all of it, but enough that I instantly felt the difference in terms of _give_ ; like Lisa’s body had begun to grudgingly accept me, her hole spreading far enough that, if I were to push _up_ \- done. I had my foothold. Lisa had her moment.  
  
When it came, she didn’t wave as it passed her by. She took the plunge, made the change from ‘almost in’ to ‘in’ without a single moment of hesitation, her inner walls sporadically twitching around me; Around the head and an inch onto the shaft with a soft, trembling ‘oh’ that said everything that had to be said.  
  
“It was worth the wait,” I breathed out, talking for the both of us. “Fucking worth it.”  
  
This was the first time I’d had sex in a year. Actual sex that didn’t involve Lisa imitating a vacuum or me eating her out like a pudding cup that still had chocolate at the bottom. **_It was everything I’d ever wanted._**  
  
“Yeah… Yeah.” Lisa nodded and jerkily rolled her shoulders, her tone faint as she processed what had just happened. Memorized it. Put it up on the mental fridge... You never forget your first. “I’m so _full_.”  
  
How sweet.  
  
I tittered as my hands came together above my head in a clasp, my breasts pushing up in response. “You’re going to make me blush, you.”  
  
“Stop trying to m-ake me laugh. Please.” She slid further down on my pole, hitting halfway before stopping with a gasp. “I’m t-trying not to fall. You’re not helping.”  
  
Reminded of just how bad I was at keeping my mouth shut, I gave it another go while Lisa continued her self-imposed trial. At what looked like her attempting to take all of me in a single go, no pulling up or away, only stopping to take in air and wriggle her hips to loosen up.  
  
Swish, swish, swish, went her short skirt with every shake of her waist. Squish, squish, squish went every centimeter of stubborn progress down my shaft. A pair of patterns that I found hypnotizing, the dripping of sweat from the ends of her hair onto my stomach causing a spark of gold to flare in my own locks.  
  
She was trying so **_hard_**. Why wouldn’t I find that sexy? She was pressing all of my buttons right now and, for once, I didn’t know if she knew that.  
  
Lisa was very busy, after all.  
  
==========  
  
Lisa was trying not to hyperventilate. She was trying very hard not to hyperventilate. She was trying hard not to hyperventilate or bite through her own lip as pain and pleasure came together and lost their meaning; the world had faded away, even the room filling presence that was Yang a vague existence at the edge of her awareness.  
  
She had what she’d been waiting for, working for. She’d gotten to it in every way that mattered before Glory Girl could have, winning their game before it had even really begun… Lisa was selfish. So very selfish. Grasping even. Hungry.  
  
Lisa knew what she was.  
  
When Yang had said she might have been a little much for a first timer, she might have had a point. The metaphorical size of her mouth (she’d heard it was pretty fucking big) had no bearing on just how much she was trying to ‘chew’ right then; Yang skirted the edge of believability in terms of size and Lisa’s body had to make sure she knew it.  
  
It was pretty loud about it… Going from third base after a couple of months to fourth in an hour hadn’t done much for her. Who could have guessed?  
  
A sudden jolt as she made another rush towards the bottom pushed the air out of her lungs like she’d been punched in the stomach… Which was just about what had happened she realized, once the lights came back on. Lisa had just been punched. Or she’d just punched something.  
  
Semantics. It was all semantics when you’d just mashed your own cervix like it was a busted door bell… That hadn’t hurt nearly as much as she thought it would, but _ow._  
  
“... Are you fucking serious? You’re shitting me,” Lisa wheezed in disbelief while frantically pawing at the hem of her skirt. It only took her dropping it once before she had it up and she had herself a visual of a whole two inches of Yang out in the cold. “Oh my fucking god, _why_?”  
  
Yang pouted as, in a rare show of embarrassment, red and a sheen of sweat began to bloom in her cheeks. “Sorry.”  
  
She should be.  
  
“Oh, shut up. Its fine. Fine.” This was nothing. Nothing at all. This was more than enough for the both of them to handle, even if this was going to bug the everloving shit out of her for a while to come. “I’ll live.”  
  
Lisa’s rise to the top was the opposite of her fall, the power of frustration damn near pulling her inside out as her - grip - proved to be a problem. The trembling in her legs firmed up if only by necessity, the knowledge of what awaited her if she fell a strong incentive to suck it up in all meanings of the word… All while Yang continued to hold herself back from acting, her eyes shining purple in the almost-dark.  
  
For all her faults, Yang knew how to read a room. She knew how to be supportive. This was Lisa’s time now and she’d been handed the baton… Lisa could do this. She didn’t need a landing strategy.  
  
… Of all the things Yang had said in the past few months, why was that the one to come up?  
  
Lisa shook her head, momentarily blinding herself as she pulled together the parts of herself that had been drifting away. The feeling of her being emptied was nearly, if not as intense as it had been to be filled. The light, pulsing contractions of a weak orgasm said as much, the first of the night if she could bother to count it as such.  
  
If her eyelids didn’t flutter once, it didn’t count...and now to take this new problem into account.  
  
Lisa’s slight lean over Yang deepened, her hands leaving Yang’s shoulders to plant themselves on either side of the much taller girl’s head, with Lisa’s own chin just above Yang’s collarbone with how far she’d gone. Any further and she’d plant herself right in Yang’s cleavage, too far for what she had planned…and _goddamn_ was Yang tall.  
  
“I said I was going to fuck myself silly.” Her lips twitched and eyes fell to half-mast when she did a testing twerk, fast and shallow and just _right._ “So I’m going to fuck myself silly.”  
  
“Don’t tell me what you’re going to do. Do it.” Yang blew a kiss at her. “Show me what you got.”  
  
Something snapped inside of her. Something that wasn’t physical, thankfully, or all that important in the greater scheme of things. Just her inhibitions. Nothing important, as she’d said. Her need to show Yang whatfor was as strong as ever.  
  
That she was expressing that need through bouncing on Yang’s schlong until it was red and raw would be left out of her memoirs.  
  
Lisa twitched. Jerked. Carefully moved her hips to find her rhythm and depth she was going to stick with for a start. Finding it had an honest, crooked smile growing across her face to accompany her gradually quickening pace. An inch and a half above the middle of Yang’s cock and one rep every four seconds or so; to start.  
  
Practice makes perfect...and she was going to have to throw her underwear away after this, wasn’t she?  
  
“Much better,” Lisa purred, her skirt falling over the small of her back with a flick of the waist, revealing her quickly moving rear and making Yang’s fingers twitch and eyes widen in an unspoken need to _touch_. “Much, much better.”  
  
Pleasure had won out over pain.  
  
Yang grumbled in agreement, her normal snark lost under the sight and feel of Lisa rutting herself on her pole; absolutely thrilled, the muscles in her arms standing out stark against her skin as she resisted the urge to help Lisa along. As she resisted the urge to _move_ , to follow the letter of Lisa’s demands.  
  
The letter. The spirit was much weaker.  
  
Yang had keyed herself into Lisa’s rhythm at the same time they had. Her arms were still where she’d put them, her legs exactly the same… Lisa couldn’t do much about Yang’s pelvis though or anything attached ( _she_ was attached if you thought about it), not as long as Yang didn’t try to thrust back.  
  
Yang had keyed herself into Lisa’s rhythm...and started - _flexing._ Showing off how she hadn’t ignored any part of her body when it came to exercise by pulling at Lisa’s core like it was on a fishing line, a dull _thud_ resounding through the room and her bones with every tug; filling her with a thick, lava-like warmth, loads of pre, as a byproduct.  
  
It didn’t take long for that mess to start seeping out, to get dragged out by Lisa’s stroking and turn her act into a sloppy, sucking mess as Yang quietly laughed at her. As she silently took advantage of the situation to leave her mark, coating Lisa’s inners walls and folds in the next closest thing to heated oil that had Lisa’s entire body breaking out into a sweat that wasn’t entirely born from exertion.  
  
Lisa’s glare didn’t do much. Couldn’t have, even if that was the normal when she sent them at Yang. She couldn’t even see through her hair, the teary blur that had started over her eyes. She couldn’t even talk, too busy sucking air in heated gasps to bother. It was a failure all around...and her arms were starting to lose their strength.  
  
How long had she been doing this? Four minutes? Five? Ten? Not long enough.  
  
Her eyelids flickered, her mouth opening into a large ‘O’ as she creamed all over Yang’s prick while in the middle of extraction. An extraction that she ended prematurely, dropping back down for the sake of giving herself something to squeeze around as she rode the greater part of her orgasm out; fingers turning into claws, biting into the couch as her arms locked up, pure stubbornness in action as her biceps and shoulders screamed at her to let it go.  
  
She wasn’t completely silly yet. Lisa Wilbourn, when it came to the important things, was a girl of her word.  
  
“How do you feel about one-for-one?” Yang asked, the words on the edge of Lisa’s hearing. Rough. Tight. “An exchange?”  
  
Lisa, her orgasm mostly over with other than the aftershocks, tentatively made to start again as words of her own left her with a gurgle, “exchange what?”  
  
“You cum, I cum. An exchange.”  
  
Lisa stuttered to a stop, freezing at the lowest point of her bounce to try and glare. With one eye somehow shaking off the covering of dark-blonde hair over it, it was a hundred percent more effective than the last.  
  
“You already know how - productive I am,” Yang explained slowly, a light covering of sweat over her face saying all sorts of things about how Lisa was pushing her. “You aren’t losing out on anything.”  
  
Lisa, knowing _exactly_ how productive Yang was, slowly nodded… more nudged the other girl’s breasts with her forehead, considering, but she agreed. She wasn’t losing out on anything. Nothing but sadism… She was feeling a little too relaxed for sadism at the moment. Like her brain had been washed, tumbled, dried and fluffed.  
  
Sadism wasn’t a priority. Staking her claim was.  
  
Yang sighed in relief, wisps of smoke slipping through her teeth as she laid her head back on her pillow. “ **Beautiful**.”  
  
Lisa squared her jaw and forced herself back up, arms quivering in that way she’d come to recognize after months of experience, meant that they were about to give out. That she needed a five minute break at the least before she could be sure that she’d be able to rely on them for anything important. More important.  
  
This was the endgame. She couldn’t do anything but give it her all.  
  
Throwing her rhythm out the window for an entirely new one, one that now had her twirling her hips in tiny circles every third insertion and just whatever felt good in between, she tried to turn her back end into little more than a blur. A blur that was now sinking to three inches above Yang’s pelvis, taking as much of Yang as it could while keeping up the back-breaking pace she was putting herself through.  
  
“That’ll do it… Fuck, yeah, that’ll do it.” Yang moaned cutely, her back arching lightly and nearly knocking Lisa’s left arm out from under her as she did. A stiff _breeze_ would have knocked it out. “Just a little longer. Just - give it ten.”  
  
If Lisa could have counted, she had no doubt that she wouldn’t have even reached five before Yang’s rod flared, filled up with blood and stretched Lisa out to a whole new level _at_ every level. From the tip to almost-root, the veins that riddled Yang’s shaft pushed and throbbed against every nerve. She was split open so wide her pussy might as well have been a perfect circle, the weight in her stomach nearly pushing her upright under its own power… And that was all before the first rope splashes all over her insides.  
  
Lisa couldn’t have called it a _shot_. She couldn’t have called it anything then but, if she could have, it wouldn’t have been a _shot_ … A _shot_ didn’t describe it in the slightest.  
  
It was a rope. Five-feet of liquid, boiling rope in a three-inch space, that had Lisa feeling bloated from the get-go. Not just full. _Bloated_. A rope that had her forcing her rump back up to Yang’s glans with newfound energy and a shriek to relieve the pressure... Pressure that came roaring back at the second throbbing expulsion of Yang’s load, setting off one of the top five orgasms of her life at the same time as she, purposely, popped off of the first, and only, dick she’d ever had.  
  
The dick that was currently hosing a good portion of her back down as it fired off into the air, glazing her asscheeks and the back of her thighs after she’d fallen into Yang’s bust. Face-first, spasming and choking on ecstatic screams in the warm, soft darkness that was a patented Yang hug. Arms around her, face in breasts, body twitching like she’d just been tased.  
  
Consciousness receding. Sleep. Night.  
  
… Crap.  
  
==========  
  
“Poor thing tuckered herself out in just a round.” A swipe of the hand across a snoozing Lisa’s brow left it open for a kiss. A kiss, and an imprint of my lips as done in light-red lipstick; Her own little trophy, quickly smudged as she buried her face in my tits again with a sleepy mewl. “Good job, sweetie. Good job.”  
  
There was one question I had to consider after all of this. One question I had to consider as I decided that a nap sounded like a good idea and joined Lisa in slumber land… It was one of those questions you had to sleep on, figure out over a spreadsheet and a barrel of coffee.  
  
 **How far would I have to up her training for her to go for two?**


	7. A Treatise in Yellow (With Ice Cream)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Sherlock(2009) cross with YDCT.
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/19043482/chapters/45231835
> 
> Read this (and the first chapter of this thing we've got) to get an idea of what's going on!

“And you thought I was full of shit, didn’t you? You thought I was making this shit up.” I scoffed and gave my pilfered newspaper a shake to straighten it out. “London, England. 1867. Queen Victoria is alive and well, the Empire’s sun has yet to set and the best thing that can be said about our situation at the moment is that our skin isn’t anything but lily white. Wonderful.”  
  
Neo, Hush held tightly to her chest, blinked up at me. Speechless. As speechless as a lifelong mute could be when they’d been pulled along on one of my many world hopping escapades without warning. Doubly mute. Extra mute.  
  
It was understandable. I’d just said something shocking, after all.  
  
“Yes, people judge folks by their skin tone in this reality. And any sexuality outside of hetero often leads to someone getting chemically castrated. Or put into a mental asylum. Or just killed outright.”  
  
I hummed as my words visibly shook her. Remnant had its problems, but at least we didn’t have _those_ ; Neo didn’t discriminate when she hurt people. She just hurt people when she felt like it. Truly, we were among barbarians.  
  
“That’s going to be a problem, I think. It really depends on how long we stay here.”  
  
She shifted Hush higher up on her body and blinked up at me again. One eye went white while the other turned from pink to brown.  
  
“Remember that story where I became the God Queen of an island nation after a zombie apocalypse, lived a long life and had like ten-plus kids before dying of old age?”  
  
I’d had a lot of kids in my...four-hundred years of life, or thereabouts. I didn’t want to be _that_ parent, but remembering all of my kids at some point had become an exercise in futility. Saying ten-plus was a hell of a lot easier to handle.  
  
Neo nodded, her head shifting on her neck as if it were being worked by a puppeteer. A terrible one, with palsy.  
  
“It wasn’t so bad the first time around,” I admitted while closing my paper to slide it under an arm. “I guess I could do it again, if I had to. The lack of zombies is nice.” I peered over the edge of the roof to look down on the streets below. I gave it a squint. “I don’t see any, anyway. And I suppose it smells too much like industrial smoke and horse crap for there to be zombies.”  
  
Neo continued with her physical silence, an expression all its own while I gave the street one more look over. You could never be too careful, after all. That the sun was out, even if partially hidden by enough smog to choke a Goliath, did not preclude the existence of vampires. Or black magicians. Or mad genni. Robots, even.  
  
The places I’d been had never been simple. They might seem so at first, when they weren’t throwing me into the deep end of the Grimm pool, but I’d come to recognize the pattern after the second time around; The beginning was always the same.  
  
“It's not all bad though, Neo. Sure, we’re in a space just above the bottom floor of a labyrinthine class system. Sure we’ve got no resources, no connections and only one change of clothes. Sure, we’re here during a time of religious and social unrest.” I took a breath. “But do you know what the good part is?”  
  
Neo, eyes narrowed at me like I was a madwoman, which I actually might have been after all these years, and flipped me off. Rude.  
  
“It means that we’re here during a time of religious and social unrest, you pint-sized little shit! It's our time to climb the social ladder!” I shook my fist at her. She gasped and switched hands, Hush slipping into her right and at the ready while her left extended the finger of antagonistic companionship. I didn’t pay it any mind. She was just being difficult. “I don’t need to explain this shit to you!”  
  
She glared at me.  
  
I glared back.  
  
A smile began to spread across her face.  
  
A smile began to spread across mine.  
  
She lunged, Hush first.  
  
“Damn it, Neo! Get off of me! This isn’t my fault!”  
  
The beginning was always the same. It was always me with nothing but my clothes, my weapons, hazy memories of other realities that were now very relevant and a whole lot of gumption. A _whole_ lot of gumption. A lot. It cannot be overstated how much gumption I’d needed to guide a post-apocalypse proto-country into prosperity.  
  
Gumption was super fucking important...but now I wasn’t completely alone. Now I had a Neo; I’d always wondered how awesome having an Isekai cheat item for once would be. Now I know.  
  
Hush’s tip glanced over my solar plexus, lightly winding me as I forced myself to roll down its length to grab Neo by the hair and start punching her in the face. Or try to. I only got a pair of hits to her nose, turning her eyes from pink to brown before she damn near dislocated my thumb with a knuckle between the joints. There was only time to let out a yowl of pain before she had her legs wrapped around my extended arm and started flexing them in an attempt to break it at the elbow.  
  
It could have been better, to be honest.   
  
My arm began to heat up, jumping from a balmy 106 degrees fahrenheit to over 300 in the space between breaths. Neo couldn’t have gotten off of me fast enough, leaving me with a sore arm while she ducked behind a chimney to lick her wounds, first-degree inner thigh burns, and hiss soundlessly at me.  
  
It could be worse. Now I just had to find the seediest part of the city, do some flexing on my new people and let it go on from there.  
  
… I really hoped it wasn’t vampires though. Just saying.  
  
==========  
  
“Five girls. Five. Five girls cut open on an altar because some nob thinks he can talk to the devil.” I took a moment to stub out a cigarillo in my ashtray then light the next, a vice I’d picked up over the years; the local flavor of criminal had been a bad influence on me… It needed cleaning. If I added another butt I’d have myself an ashy mountain of specially-bred hemlock and aconite and that wasn’t a good look. “Fucking animals.”  
  
Twenty-three years. Twenty-three years of work. Twenty-three years of pulling the East end of London and its million or so people under my wing. Twenty-three years of making Whitechapel the tarnished jewel of the city, a center of culture in the middle of the fog of industry. Twenty-three _fucking_ years of making the idle rich think twice before they decided to find their fun in running someone over with a carriage.  
  
How old was I again? Forty or four-hundred? Who cared? I was too old for this shit.  
  
I fucking wish it had been vampires. God save us from the nobility. God save me from the terminally **stupid**.   
  
That nob, Blackwood, hadn’t done all that he had on his lonesome. He’d had help. _East ender_ help... They’d forgotten who they took their cues from, gambled their lives away for a couple of pounds.  
  
They weren’t long for this world. That was a fact.  
  
If I knew Neo, which I did, they wouldn’t even get to get acquainted with the prison food before winding up with a mysterious case of hole-in-throat and pliers-to-teeth. They’d stopped being my problem as soon as the tiny thing kicking her legs on my desk had heard that it was open season… She’d adapted to the era without even trying.   
  
London in the 19th century fucking _sucked_.  
  
The freakout at the start where she’d tried to rip my head off had passed pretty quickly. She’d gotten over most of it as soon as she saw our clothing options; bustle skirts and corsets and parasols were her jam, after all. That we had essentially taken charge of hell on earth after that had filled her with euphoria. That, or something close enough there was little difference.  
  
The sex hadn’t gotten any less intense since then. There was that.  
  
She’d only felt better and better about her new life as time went on. Her leash had been left unclipped more often than not during the first few years we’d been here. All we’d had was acceptable targets in the early days and there was still no shortage of people that aspired to become an example as to why you toed the line. Neo was the very picture of ‘never worked a day in her life’.  
  
She loved her job too much for it to be work.   
  
Neo, knowing I was thinking of her in that way people did when they’d known each other half their lives, turned her head and blew me a kiss. The little finger wave I gave back as I let out a plume of smoke into the room, one that would have killed everyone but me if I hadn’t suppressed it, made her shiver as a dreamy smile spread across her face.  
  
I didn’t know what I’d have done without her, to be honest. Probably started burning down country estates or something before eventually crushing the entire British army on the field when they finally found the balls to try it. That sounded like me.  
  
A couple of lifetimes of experience with myself helped in keeping me honest.  
  
“Sherlock Holmes and John Watson though. I should have expected it. They’re two of the brightest sparks on this whole damn island.” I tapped my newspaper before folding it up, an act that turned Neo’s expression from something I failed to call lovestruck into a hungry leer. “And, no. That wasn’t an invitation for you to barge in on my fun.” I hummed and thought back as far as I could. “This scenario feels familiar somehow. Did I read about it?”  
  
Neo shrugged and hopped off the desk, giving Hush a pretty twirl before putting it over her shoulder while refusing to look me in the eye. She was going to be pouty all day, now that I’d taken away her fun. Tough.  
  
Letting her have her fun would end mine. We couldn’t have that.  
  
“It might have been a movie. A book that became a movie? A movie that became a book?” I frowned as I waved my smoking hand and took a stand from my seat. “No. That’s stupid. Who ever heard of a movie becoming a book? Maybe a video game, but a movie?”  
  
Neo scoffed, cream-colored ankle-length skirt whispering her dismissal as she turned her back to me to walk out the fifth floor window.  
  
“Don’t forget we’ve got dinner with Sunday at six. Playtime has to be short.”  
  
Neo froze.  
  
“She wanted to introduce her girlfriend to us, officially. Meredith. You remember her. She’s the one with...” I waved my hand in a curve as Neo looked over her shoulder at me with a gimlet eye. Sunday was a lot like me that way, full of good taste and culture. “The huntress with the red hair. Uses hatchets.”  
  
Neo came back to life with a scowl, nodded, then took a step out to drop like a rock to the courtyard below; anything to escape the situation that was being forced to pretend they were a normal person.  
  
Forget pouty for a day. This was going to last all week. Shorter if I put her through the sexual equivalent of a meat grinder, but way too damn long. Also, hell on my teeth. Leaving all those bite marks on her body was hard work and I did not trust the dentists around here.   
  
I looked out the window, already knowing that Neo was long gone by the sudden division that had appeared in the children playing down below. The lot of them were still in disarray, some of them actually picking themselves up as if they’d dived out of the way. Which they most likely had.   
  
It was the sane thing to do. And sensible.  
  
This orphanage didn’t raise morons. It raised heroes, which were actually a type of idiot and...and now I was bored again.  
  
Wonderful.  
  
==========  
  
“I, Watson, have come across a most intriguing device.”  
  
Delightful. That it hadn’t exploded yet was only a matter of time.  
  
“It's nice to see that you’re keeping yourself busy. It's barely been a week since that scuffle with Blackwood.” John’s reply as he stepped into Holmes’ study and around one of a hundred knicknacks was an absent one. The days when Sherlock didn’t find something odd to obsess about only barely outnumbered the days when he didn’t. “Cases have been slow, I assume?”  
  
Thank God for that.  
  
“Interesting ones have been non-existent. I’ve solved most of them over tea. Or during my morning ablutions.” Holmes clarified impatiently as he poked at what seemed to be a bright green lantern on his end table, dragged into the rough center of the room and garish pride of place. “More than half of them were cases of infidelity and cock fights gone wrong.”  
  
“Just the usual then?”  
  
“Quite.”  
  
“Whatever pays the taxman their due.” John sniffed as an unexpected scent, one that wasn’t just alcohol of suspect quality or the dust of ages, rose to his nose. “Why do I smell fresh rain? It hasn’t in days.”  
  
That was rare, but not unheard of.  
  
“Why - do you - smell rain.” Sherlock nodded. “That is the question. It is one I endeavour to find an answer to. This is a conundrum, one that started when I found it being handed out on a Baker street corner to a line of men of suspect character... Why is there the smell of rain?”   
  
John blinked and gave the lantern which, once he looked at it, didn’t look much like a lantern at all. Not one that he knew. It was very _utilitarian_. Without decoration. With odd curves and rounded edges and a lack of glass in its construction that left him vaguely unsettled by the rational worry that was having an uncovered lantern around the furniture.  
  
It wasn’t a lantern, but it was enough of one to get his hackles up. How odd.  
  
“You’ve noticed then. That effect of its lines screams that you should be careful. Cautious. As long as you aren’t a complete fool. Or colorblind. The green sears itself into the eyes, making it impossible to ignore. The designer of this artifact either chose very well or very poorly. I have yet to tell which.” Holmes nodded again as he scratched his beard, the result of a week’s lack of hygiene, and the chin beneath it a scratch. “I suspect some form of chemical reaction is in progress within, or that it had occurred nearby.”  
  
“Well. That makes it all fine then, doesn’t it?” John cleared his throat as he took a step back. “And you say you picked it up on Baker’s street.”  
  
“I did say.”  
  
“And what?”  
  
Holmes looked up with a frown, his fingers still feeling the object out. “And what, what?”  
  
John held a hand out and open and raised a brow, staying otherwise silent.  
  
“Ah. You suspect I got into trouble. Bah. Perish the thought. You worry far too much.” He began rubbing his thumb thoughtfully under the rain cover on a specific spot. “They gave it to me. The only trouble I had was that I was forced to stand in line with said men of suspect character.”  
  
“You? Standing in line?”  
  
“It was an excruciating ten minutes. The lack of stimulation was nearly the end of me,” Holmes admitted seriously as he put the lantern on its side. John took another step back. “Remnant Metalworks. I don’t believe I’ve heard of them.”  
  
“They make more than decent medical equipment,” John continued at Sherlock’s inquiring look. It wasn’t often that he knew something that his friend didn’t. It was an interesting feeling. “I’ve used their fare before, during the war. I still have some in my kit.” He adjusted his collar and cleared his throat. “I have never found a finer edge on a scalpel.”  
  
Like cutting through air. A welcome change.  
  
“I see... Strange name, that. And interesting. The makers are of some repute indeed if the Royal Army is making use of their stock. Surprised I haven’t heard of them before now.” Sherlock visibly filed that away before moving back to his newest obsession. A day or a year, it would come back eventually. “Either way, the young woman giving them out from a wagon was a breath of fresh air in comparison. Very helpful. Well spoken. May I even say, well read?”  
  
“She was literate? How and why did that come up?”  
  
“When she showed me where the instructions were for this contraption. Look.” Sherlock put it between his hands and twisted, leaving deeply unpleasant scratches all over the wood as he did so. And, right there, bold as brass, was a plaque. “And of course it came up. That is worthy of note, especially considering where I found someone with that particular talent.”  
  
That was fair.  
  
“... Baker’s street isn’t known for its poets, no. And why the devil are you experimenting with this as if it were something out of this world if there are instructions? Instructions exist for a reason.” John leaned forward, filled with regret for having asked. He should have known better by now. “Do not stick items in flaps. Do not stick fingers in flaps. Do not fiddle with flaps. Do not leave this item in a room that is in use. Do not put your face in it. If you start coughing or experience chest pain, move away from the lantern with haste. Enjoy your reprieve from the fog.”  
  
From the fog? Also, how often had someone done something unfortunate to the flaps for it to be the starter?   
  
Actually, seeing as even Sherlock now had one of these lanterns in their possession, maybe it wasn’t so ridiculous as all that. Never mind that then.  
  
“Following instructions to the letter is for those who wish to remain blissful in their ignorance. You should know better by now, Watson.” He wagged a finger chidingly at him. “Your domestication is beginning to show.”  
  
John inhaled and resisted jabbing his best friend in the nose. “Holmes.”  
  
“Right, back to the matter at hand then.” Holmes rolled his shoulders and pretended that he hadn’t just taken a swipe at John’s fiancee. Again. The man was a _child_. “The fog that comes off the industrial quarters. You know of them. Like pea soup and as thick as the average bobbie’s skull.”  
  
“Get on with it, Holmes.”  
  
“If you’d let me _finish_.” There wasn’t even a pause worth noticing before he started up again. “Supposedly, this blindingly verdant dispenser of oh-so-mysterious chemicals was created to thin this fog by unexplained means. By means unknown to me which means that I, of course, must make them otherwise.” He narrowed his eyes while fingering the turnkey. “I have yet to observe this effect in action and I am wondering if I should get myself another, for the sake of redundancy.”  
  
“Looking to threaten a patent then?”  
  
“I, Watson, am a man of science and a seeker of knowledge. Something as - paltry as a paper in some dusty cabinet in some buereacrat’s office will not hold me.”  
  
“So you are then. Right. I don’t know what I was thinking.” John swiped a thumb over his moustache with another sniff while Sherlock looked back at him, affronted. “I’m not helping you break into Remnant Metalworks’ offices to find the ones they partnered with for whatever mixture is inside of that lantern, to be clear.”  
  
“I don’t believe it shall come to that.” Holmes stood upright, his back making all sorts of unpleasant crackling noises as he hobbled about to gather something that could reasonably be called an ensemble. That and some cologne. “I’ll just return to the site from which this tool was procured and start asking some pointed questions. Maybe I’ll even visit the boxing ring for old time’s sake, for information and for the sake of an impending monetary dilemma; having to pay the rent on my own after my abandonment is going to be quite the struggle.”  
  
John pinched his nose between his forefinger and thumb. “God damn it, Holmes. I am _not_ abandoning you.”  
  
“Which is what someone that had plans to abandon their closest companion would say.” Sherlock pulled his coat over his shoulders, doused his head in half a bottle of cologne and shook off the last of his early morning alcohol binge. “Lets be on with it then. Time is passing us by while you dodder about, wallowing in your well-deserved guilt. There is a curiosity that needs solving.”  
  
“Holmes.” John shook his head as Sherlock pushed by him. “You need to lay off the snuff.”  
  
“Not snuff.” Sherlock huffed as Gladstone picked himself up from his corner to run into another part of the house. “Coca leaves. I’ve moved on to other things.”  
  
“Ah.” John intoned dryly. “That makes all the difference then.”  
  
“The lack of bleeding from the nostrils is rather refreshing. This won’t take long.” Holmes raised his hand to hail a passing carriage. “We’ll be done by tomorrow, I expect. But a pleasant diversion nonetheless.”  
  
Whatever got him out of the house.  
  
==========  
  
“... Someone got their hair stuck in the flaps. How could I have forgotten the hair? Sunday? Sweetie?” I raised my voice a decibel, loud enough to be heard from at least the next three rooms and jostle my hat. “Could you tell the boys to put down a warning about getting their hair stuck in the flaps?”  
  
“Oh, Lord. Really? How did you forget that, Da’?”  
  
“Boredom is the mind killer...and its hard to believe how stupid people can be when they put their mind to it.” I sighed. “That’s why.”  
  
Silence for close to a minute. “... How is it, now that you’re out from under your rock? How is the sunlight treating you? Try not to stare into it for too long, will you?”  
  
“Twenty-one isn’t too old for me to take you to the ring for a sparring match, young lady.”  
  
Silence once more. Just like her mother, she had the gift of it. Thankfully, unlike her mother, she didn’t wallow in the blood of her enemies. Or her friends. Or anyone, really. Small blessings, her being the sanest of us.  
  
… Fuck I was bored.


	8. The Burns and the Bees

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Remnant of a Worm/YDCT cross.
> 
> https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/remnant-of-a-worm-worm-rwby-post-gm-taylor.692024/#post-51735329
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/19043482/chapters/45231835
> 
> Read both these things (and the first chapter of this thing we've got) to get an idea of what's going on!
> 
> Seriously! If anything, read the first thing! The Remnant of a Worm thing! It's pretty good!

Ruby...didn’t quite dance down the street. She didn’t quite _not_ dance down the street, but she didn’t do that other thing either. A dance move every couple of steps wasn’t dancing. It was just tempered happiness. Tempered because, even if it was the middle of the night, it didn’t mean someone wasn’t watching. If Yang had taught her anything, it was that there was always a camera somewhere.  
  
Just because you couldn’t see them, didn’t mean they weren’t there. She wasn’t getting put on ‘Remnant’s Most Hilarious Scroll Movies’’. She wasn't getting her five minutes of fame and canned laugh track on a Saturday Night special. Not today. Not on her big day.  
  
She’d gotten into Beacon just an hour ago. _Beacon_. She’d gotten into the biggest hunting school on Remnant two years early, at fifteen, and all she’d had to do to make it happen was stop a robbery. A Dust store robbery. A Dust store robbery that had had more than three times the amount of people you’d actually need to rob a Dust store doing the robbing.  
  
Why you’d need twenty men to hold up a single old cashier was beyond her. If the store had been _bigger_ she might have been able to see it. The bigger a place is, the more stuff it has. The more stuff it has, the more people you need to carry it off. That was just common sense.  
  
 _From Dust till Dawn_ was not a big store. Not even close. Heck, _she_ might have been able to rob it on her lonesome if she wanted to. Not that she did, but it had to be said. Ruby was all of fifteen years old and all she’d have needed to take all the Dust up at the front would be a couple of canisters and a big sack with a money sign on it.  
  
Why the sack? Tradition, of course. That was a silly question to ask… It would have been easy.  
  
So why that many people? Why did none of them have an Aura worth talking about? Who wore red sunglasses at night unironically? Why had they attacked her as soon as she’d walked in through the door?  
  
Why had Ozpin invited her to Beacon, fed her cookies with a side of milk down at the police station (that half of the people there knew her as ‘Yang’s sister’ was unsettling), for doing something as simple as beating up a bunch of untrained mooks? Like, sure, that was a good thing to do, and it made her all warm and fuzzy inside because she’d done something nice, but it wasn’t exactly impressive. If she’d been any less gentle with them, they’d have disintegrated instead of crumpling like soggy paper bags.  
  
Questions. Ruby had them.  
  
Was all of that really enough to get her into the best hunting school on Remnant? Was what she’d done without thinking been as brave as Ozpin had made it out to be? Had she really shown off the skills that the school expected in its students just by kicking around some guys in cheap suits? Ruby wasn’t all that sure about any of that.  
  
She could almost hear Yang in her ear, telling her that people didn’t do that for someone they didn’t know unless they were selling something; you, or _to_ you. Or that they were trying to set you up for a fall. Sometimes both at the same time.  
  
Yang could be Yang, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have a point. Or twelve. Ozpin was super important. That he’d taken the time to come out to a police station to meet a nobody like her was...weird.  
  
Ruby smacked her lips and continued her long walk back to the bullhead pads, slipping in one last slide from side-to-side before quitting outright. The last bullhead back to Patch wasn’t all that far away: time or distance. There wasn’t much of either of those things...she didn’t expect that she was going to get any sleep within the next few hours. Not after the police had called her house.  
  
That sucked.  
  
It didn’t matter who had picked up the phone. If it wasn’t her dad giving her a talk about her future and how she’d made him so proud, it was going to be Yang. Yang, who was going to check if she had so much as a booboo. If she did, well, there was a reason why the police knew who Ruby was... Anyway, if not her, it was Uncle Qrow, who’d...actually, as long as he was sober enough to talk in straight sentences he’d be a lot like Yang. Just quieter about it. Then he’d teach her a new scythe trick to get her mind off of the toe she’d stubbed while kicking butt.  
  
…She’d have to play it up when she got home. Rub some dirt on her elbow or something and pretend it really hurt until her Uncle caved. It would be worth it. Even after he found out. He owed her.  
  
Who pulled the plug on a five year old’s controller when they were losing at a videogame? To a five year old? Uncle Qrow did, that’s who. It might have been petty, on both sides, but that had stuck with Ruby for years. What goes around comes around.  
  
Jeez… A therapist would have a field day with her, huh?  
  
Ruby stopped under a street light, her nose twitching as something unfortunately recognizable came to her nose. Yang had taken her hunting before. Actual hunting. Tracking animals, taking them down humanely and butchering them as quickly as possible… The smell of blood didn’t make Ruby nervous.  
  
That she smelt it inside of Vale, on an empty street in the middle of the night, _did_.  
  
Crescent Rose was in her hand before she even had the time to think about it, Aura up and thrumming before the mechanisms of her weapon had finished working, bringing her baby to full extension; Ruby was an optimist. She wasn’t an idiot though. Yang’s horror movie collection, pretty much all of them being some shade of _illegal,_ had taught her some things.  
  
If something came at her out of the dark, hit first and ask questions later for one. She’d heard that Atlas prosthetics were pretty good these days. Ruby would apologize later… Those movies were really scary, alright? And what kind of moron thought that going down into a basement was a good idea? Alone? With an Aura-enhanced serial killer running around? Like, really? Who did that?  
  
“If anyone is there, thinking it’d be fun to add another person to your count for the night,” Ruby said faux-casually, channeling her inner-Yang as she racked the slide on Crescent Rose. “You’re about to be in for a world of hurt.”  
  
And, with that, she charged in, just as ready to charge back out...and she was forced to pause five yards in as the alley she turned into quickly went from dry cement to a gigantic puddle of red. Huge. Gigantic. All coming from a single person, facedown in the mess.  
  
The person that had just let out a shuddering gasp, somehow still alive, even with the two holes in her… Oh. _Oh._ Was that their _brain?_  
  
It was a lot more gray than the movies had led her to believe...and where was her _arm?_  
  
“Oh, shit biscuits.” Ruby made sure to breathe through her mouth as she said that, forcing herself not to throw up and keep an eye out instead as she reached for her scroll. “Oh my sweet honeyed ice tea.”  
  
Describing how her day had gone to the family was going to _suck._..and she’d never thought that she’d need her ability to call emergency services without looking for something that wasn’t Yang related. Silly of her, right? Yep. Silly. Hahahaha... Hah...  
  
This day sucked Grimm balls. Big ones. Huge. Positively gigantic.  
  
The dying person on the floor wheezed and Ruby typed faster.  
  
This week’s nightmares were going to be some real doozies.  
  
==========  
  
My plan to get Ruby into Beacon had succeeded. Easily. I hadn’t had a single doubt that it would and I was a freaking genius for...well, alright. I’d had a couple. Like, two. They’d mostly been me worrying about how closely the old man in the tower was watching my little sister and how hard he’d jump at a chance to have her in Beacon a couple of years early. They hadn’t been all that big though.  
  
I was still a genius though. Totally.  
  
I had the idea that, somewhat like me, he could see the writing on the wall. Maybe not the exact same writing, but he could see some goddamn writing and, somewhere between all the dicks and advertisements for a good time, he saw the end was coming. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But the end was coming.  
  
The Dust was running out. That wasn’t common knowledge, but it was. Like I’d said. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but it was running out. I wouldn’t get to live to see it. Hell, my kids probably wouldn’t. But, to a man who looked at decades like most people looked at months, it might as well have been right around the corner.  
  
This whole planet relied on Dust for their everything. Food, entertainment, communications, defense. Just a day without it would have every Kingdom on Remnant imploding, exploding into all out riots that were quickly snuffed out by the pissed-off Grimm clambering over the silent perimeter turrets and unmanned walls; there was no such thing as backups or alternatives. Even something as simple as solar power had been tossed into the trash bin of history because it wasn’t as ‘convenient’.  
  
Why, yes. Yes I _was_ super fucking bitter about that and my nearly shuttered business for Dust alternative survival gear. How did you guess? … Either way. Ozzy only had a couple generations left before he lost by default and Salem ruled supreme. I was sure he’d just love to keep playing this game of immortals shit for longer than just another hundred years or so but, well, with the deadline coming up, he had to cut some corners.  
  
My doubts that he wouldn’t take the bait hadn’t been serious. I’d gift wrapped him an excuse to take one of the last pairs of silver eyes in the world under his wing, just before the final showdown. I’d have been surprised if he _hadn’t_ taken it...and been resigned to escalating the matter until he pulled his thumb out his ass and noticed my sister.  
  
I wouldn’t have enjoyed it. At all.  
  
I was already in the hole for a couple thousand lien to some real assholes. Getting a couple of guys together that didn’t mind taking some jail time on the chin hadn’t been cheap. Paying Junior for fixing it all up had just made it worse...but, seeing as the alternative was siccing Neo on Ruby for something suitably high profile but amazingly non-lethal, I could handle some debt.  
  
Having to explain all the terrible things I’d do to Roman if she even left a _scar_ would have taken a good part of the afternoon. Money well spent. Everything had gone great. Everything was wonderful. Everything was swell and dandy and whoopedy-doo-da-fucking-day, whatever the fuck that meant.  
  
My sister walking in on the aftermath of what sounded to me like an old-fashioned gangland shooting kind of put a damper on the whole thing though. Getting the call for _that_ while I had been balls deep in Neo’s backend had mixed the atavistic worry for endangered family with the pain of having a pair of testicles that could have only been called ‘azure’; those weren’t things that should ever mix.  
  
That hospital waiting room I’d gone to so I could pick up a suspiciously watery-eyed Ruby would smell like sandalwood until the end of time. As would one of Beacon’s personal Bullheads after Ozpin had offered to lend us one of the dorm rooms until the morning, when we could take another one back to Patch. That had been nice of him.  
  
It hadn’t been enough to soothe my seething fury, but it had been nice of him.  
  
Needless to say, I was still furious. How could I not have been? The greatest day in my sister’s life had been ruined by someone so incompetent they couldn’t kill someone with a doubletap to the back of the head.  
  
My blue balls didn’t even rate.  
  
That was going to need answers. Ignoring how my sister had stumbled in on that, that wasn’t how things were _done_ in Junior’s territory. And it had been his territory, even if it was just the outskirts. There were _rules_. He was an information broker, fixer and small time pusher that sometimes loaned out some cheap muscle. Not a hitman. He was ‘legit’. As legit as a club owner ever got.  
  
This was the sort of shit that could start a gang war if someone didn’t own up. Or it could just end with a couple of people being forced off the edge of the docks with broken limbs. Who knew? Not me. That wasn’t my purview. You couldn’t get in trouble if you didn’t know anything.  
  
Ruby, asleep, sniffled and buried her face into the crook of my arm; the wet patch on my shoulder finally had the chance to dry.  
  
I’d make an exception though. Just this once.  
  
==========  
  
Taylor hadn’t thought it was possible for schools to get this big. Or this… Fancy didn’t even begin to describe it. If she had to, if she really had to, she’d compare it to a Disney movie. Cinderella, maybe, or Beauty and the Beast without all the gold and magic. Long, sweeping staircases. High ceilings. Satin curtains over windows that Taylor had almost expected to be stained.  
  
The amount of money she saw everywhere was obscene.  
  
Taylor couldn’t tell whether she was disappointed or not that there wasn’t a singing teapot and candlestick pair there to greet her when she entered. Sadly, all there was were a bunch of teenagers in sleepwear, with all that implied. Well, not all. Thank God for that.  
  
No one had combined sleeping bags and tried pretending they were trying to share body warmth yet.  
  
Taylor didn’t have the best of opinions when it came to people her age. And for good reason. She knew teenagers. She was still a teenager. She’d been forced to interact with other teenagers. Spending the last two years with the Chicago Wards hadn’t exactly pulled the bar up any, she’d say that.  
  
Picking up a blue sleeping bag as she glanced around the ballroom, Taylor looked for her spot to lay down for the night. Somewhere with not too many people and just enough light for her to read herself to sleep; she found it quickly. Past several boys wrestling in little more than their boxers and around the rare few people that had actually decided to sleep.  
  
That surprised her. Just a little bit. She didn’t quite know what they were doing tomorrow but she was sure it was the last barrier to joining this school in full. Not everyone was going to get in. It was a fact. That no one seemed to care about that, or show it at least, was - weird.  
  
Maybe it was a cultural thing?  
  
“Do you mind if I share your light?” Taylor asked as she came within range of a pair of girls who couldn’t have been more different if they’d tried. One had red hair so dark it looked black all the way down until it lightened at the tips. The other had hair so blonde Taylor could have mistaken it for gold. The first was lithe and petite while the second was buxom and slightly taller than even Taylor was. A study in contrasts, both of them having just finished waving at another girl across the room while they were halfway in their bags. “Is that alright?”  
  
“Share our light? Yeah, sure. I don’t have a problem with that.” The blonde’s oddly lilting tone, not quite an accent and not quite an affectation, temporarily put Taylor on the backfoot. Their large smile, the way they held themselves even while sitting down and wrapped up in an admittedly, seemingly, very high quality sleeping bag. It all added up to...do what? Something. It put Taylor on edge. “What about you, Rubles?”  
  
That wasn’t the strangest name that Taylor had heard within the last week. She’d been dragged around the city by someone named Coco Adel. Like the handbag with a few letters shaved off. Rubles wasn’t even a contender. Her eyes though? That shade of silver, set in a pale and getting even more pale face couldn’t have been normal.  
  
“Ruby? Are you okay?”  
  
Those eyes were too bright. Too clear. They were just like the metal the few times it had crossed her hands...and getting increasingly, uncomfortably wet. “You’re alive?”  
  
That was a jump.  
  
“What?” Taylor didn’t much enjoy the experience that was being put on the backfoot for a second time. “Yes?”  
  
“You disappeared. The hospital told me that you’d just vanished. That you weren’t there one night when I came to visit you. No one knew what had happened and no one could tell me anything.” She sniffled, her tone more - disappointed than accusing; grimace-inducing. Belly-tightening. This might have been a mistake. “I thought you were dead.”  
  
…Taylor thought she might have known where this was going.  
  
“Wait. Is this the girl? The one with the...” The blonde’s suddenly somber purple eyes glanced over every part of Taylor’s form, taking everything in without visible judgement. Not even the arm got more than a half-breath of inspection. The scars on her forehead, just under her hair took the greater part of their attention. “You look well.”  
  
For having been shot in the head, she didn’t say. She didn’t need to. And it seemed that Taylor had found her savior.  
  
“You’re - Ruby? Ruby Rose? The one that left me all those get-well cards? Right?” Taylor asked as the aforementioned ‘Rubles’ forced herself to sit up in her bag and wipe her eyes, muscles tense as wire under her skin; visible in her arms through the thin sleeves of her pajama top. “And found me when I was…?”  
  
Dying.  
  
“Y-yeah. That’s me. Ruby Rose. And, yeah. That other thing was me too. We, uh, don’t have to talk about that, if you don’t want to. We can not do that. If you want.” She nodded tersely as she took a deep breath and cleared her throat, the blonde shuffling closer in her bag to give her support visibly raising her spirits. “But I’m super glad you’re alright...and stuff.”  
  
For a moment, just a single shameful moment, Taylor considered lashing out. What she was feeling was...complicated.  
  
Taylor had chosen her death. She’d known what was coming and welcomed it with open arms. Without a single regret...but here she was, her choice torn away from her. In an alien reality with none of her friends or family. Just her.  
  
But she was better than that, if barely. Ruby hadn’t known. She’d just decided to save Taylor’s life because it was the right thing to do. Giving someone crap because they were a good person, wasn’t the type of person Taylor wanted to be.  
  
If anything, this was just another step on the Path. Ruby had never had a chance but to do what she did in the case. Taylor might as well have blamed the weather for all it mattered.  
  
“Thank you, Ruby.” Taylor forced a small smile onto her face, hoping it looked more honest than she sounded. She wasn’t entirely sure that she’d succeeded, not when the blonde cocked their head at her. “You saved my life. Really.”  
  
“A-ah. It was no problem. I couldn’t do anything else and live with myself, you know? It was just the right thing to do.” A touch of color rose up to Ruby’s cheeks as she hid her mouth with a hand. The weather was surprisingly cute, now that it didn’t look like it was going to cry. “It's fine.”  
  
“You heard her. She only did what comes natural,” the other girl said proudly, making Ruby squirm in her bag and Taylor shift on her feet as the solid _weight_ of their attention fell away. Was that an effect of their ‘Semblance’? Their power? “Ruby is just the best, isn’t she?”  
  
“Yaaaang,” said Ruby in a drawn out hiss, finally giving a name to the person that Taylor had been calling ‘the blonde’ for a while now… Taylor hadn’t felt this on edge with someone that she’d just met in a while. “Noooo.”  
  
“So modest,” was Yang’s fond reply as she ruffled Ruby's hair. Ruby, taking offense to that, started slapping at that hand like it was on fire. “What’s your name though? I can’t just keep calling you ‘tall, dark and stormy’ in my head, now can I?”  
  
Taylor found herself momentarily speechless as that _weight_ returned… Also, what? “Excuse me?”  
  
Had they just…?  
  
“Oh, Gods. Really, Yang?” With one last heavy slap, Yang’s hand left Ruby’s head. “She just got out of the hospital!”  
  
They had. That was...wow. Taylor had no words.  
  
“That’s the best time for compliments, Rubaby. There is nothing wrong with telling someone that they’re pretty,” Yang chided softly as she seemed to _fill out_ the shapeless nightdress she was wearing with what Taylor suspected was a calculated turn of their body… Also, holy _shit_. Forgot that they’d just called her pretty. Those breasts were **_massive_**. What genetic lottery had those come from? “You don’t have to tell us your name if you don’t want to, of course, but…?”  
  
That was an invitation to stay if Taylor had ever seen one.  
  
“Right. I haven’t done that, have I?” Taylor started slowly as, after some deliberation, she took a spot closer to Ruby than to Yang. She was clearly welcome there, even if, for once, she had no idea how to react. Besides Yang just having something about them that had her hair standing on end, Taylor couldn’t remember a time when someone had flirted with her. _Seriously_ at that. “My name is Taylor. Taylor Hebert.”  
  
“Nice to meet you, Taylor.” Yang reached a hand out to shake, her smile not changing even an iota as Taylor’s bugs felt a sudden chill as the warmth above Yang vanished without warning, several of them falling out of the air and to the floor as they lost most of their lift. “Yang Xiao-Long-Rose. It's a pleasure to meet you.”  
  
Taylor nodded as she added another wave of bugs. “A pleasure.”  
  
Taylor wasn’t sure it was.  
  
==========  
  
“Does anyone else feel like something is off?” I said with as much cheer as I could force through my daily bout of the afternoon grumbles. Not much, thanks to a whole new bout of existential dread I’d had dropped on my head, but I certainly wasn’t going to let that stop me. I had a reputation to maintain. “Or is it just me?”  
  
Taylor Hebert. That was a name I hadn’t heard in a long time. A very, very long time. I hadn’t even used the name in my latest books. The character, yes, in all her myriad forms, but that was a name that hadn’t seen the light of day since the first, awkward draft of the ‘Advancement’ trilogy had gone through the unholy crucible that was my publisher’s editing department.  
  
The book before that was a different story.  
  
I still remembered her though. Of course I did. How could I not when she was the basis for several of my bestsellers? How could I not when she was one of the primary reasons I’d become a writer in the first place, in another life?  
  
How could I forget the girl that had saved the multiverse, a multiverse it seemed that I was a part of… Had the Gods been Gods at all, or had they been smarter than the average Entities on a trip? Or just one weird as hell Cycle? Or long? Really, really long. Super fucking long.  
  
The longest.  
  
From what I remembered, the Thinker and the Warrior worked in terms of centuries. One or two. Not millenia… Well. Whatever. Not like I could actually do anything about it, Entities or not. Salem was the baddest bitch on the planet and I was pretty damn sure that handling Zion was well out of her wheelhouse… Whatever. Who needed sleep, am I right? Not me.  
  
It wasn’t like you needed that to live or anything.  
  
…One problem at a time. Right now, that problem was that I had the actual savior of the multiverse on my team. Sort of. Oz had had to do some serious stretching in order to fit her in...and I had to admit I didn’t like it. Not that she was on the team. Of course not. You couldn’t get much better when it came to competent older teammates.  
  
I liked living. Taylor was likely to make sure I kept on living. So, all around, this was a good thing.  
  
What I didn’t like was that we were team RWBY with a T slapped on at the end. Ruby and Weiss, Blake and I. JNPR was a thing as well, one-for-one. How? Like, I guess it was _possible_ that some things would stay the same even while other things changed, but this felt a little like self-determination and free will needed some finetuning. A patch, maybe.  
  
We’d fought and killed a Giant Nevermore and an ancient Deathstalker today.  
  
Something felt off about all of this. I didn’t like it, but I had to live with it. That was all.  
  
Not like it was all bad though. Ruby was the team leader for one, obviously. RWBYT made that clear... That was nice; a real sign of class and taste and surprisingly good decision making on Ozpin’s part. If the future was already set in stone, she had it in the bag. A very depressing bag, yes, but the bag was hers. If it wasn’t, she still had it in the bag. We were in good hands.  
  
I couldn’t even imagine how I’d have reacted if Jaune had been in charge. Probably with daily spars and constant cardio until he shaped up or shipped out. That sounded like me.  
  
“Yes. Something does ‘feel off’,” Weiss said snootily after a subjective eternity of racing thoughts and burgeoning then forcefully ignored existential crises had run their course, as was her wont. Thanks, Weiss. “I’m forced to share a room with you. Do I need to explain what’s wrong with that?”  
  
“I dunno. Maybe you do. I’m feeling like I’m in a listening mood.”  
  
Ruby, no doubt realizing that I was inches away from rolling up my verbal sleeves, was quick to jump in before I decided to break Weiss’ spine over my metaphorical knee. “Hey, you know what would be good? Calming down. Calming down would be good.” She stepped between us, a short but immovable wall. “This is the first day. We haven’t even set up the room yet.” Her eyes turned towards me as Weiss let out a huff. “Yang.”  
  
“Ruby.” I cocked my head.  
  
“Yang.” Ruby raised a brow.  
  
“Ruby,” I growled.  
  
“Yang.” Ruby narrowed her eyes.  
  
“...Ruby.” I sighed, laid low in our war of words and ideologies. She was right. Whether I liked Weiss or not, we had to get along. We were going to spend the next four years together or so. Making it miserable was stupid and, if all else failed and Weiss didn’t back off, at least I was the bigger woman; Ruby was really taking to this leadership thing. Moving on. “So, what are we going to do about sleeping space?”  
  
As one, the other three members of our group that didn’t know any better turned towards the partitioned square in the corner. The one with the carpeting and the desk and the couch and the mini-fridge in the corner where I kept the sensitive stuff that needed to stay cool and my drinks. Sometimes, both at the same time.  
  
There was a reason why it had a lock on it and it wasn’t because I didn’t like to share my soda… Partly. I, in fact, did not want to share my soda.  
  
I could do more than one thing at a time, y’know?  
  
“That’s Yang’s,” Ruby answered for me, causing everyone to look back at her instead. “Sorry, guys, I know it looks super awesome and comfortable, and it is, oh _Gods_ is the couch comfortable, but that is literally Yang’s. It's already taken.”  
  
It _was_ a pretty good couch. Glad to see Ruby was sticking to what was important.  
  
“Since when?” Weiss asked, all demand in her tone as Blake nodded at her side in silent support. Taylor just - sort of stared - and I didn’t know whether that was better or not. This was one thing I wasn’t going to let go of, even if she _really_ wanted it. Mine. “Why is it installed in our room?” She paused. “ _How_ was it installed in our room so quickly?”  
  
“I’ll explain. Some of that. I don’t know about the last thing… It's just, knowing Yang, she’ll keep you guys in the dark for a whole month before she explains anything. She’ll wait until a party to spring it on you, or for a big enough fight.” A small smile inched its way into existence on her face. “She’ll wait for when it's the most _dramatic._ ”  
  
I guess we were keeping it real in here.  
  
“Ruby!” I gasped, hand over my heart as I stumbled back, struck. “How dare you ruin my fun! How dare! I should challenge you to a duel, ten paces at dawn!”  
  
Ruby gestured at me as if to say ‘see?’ as she turned around to face the rest of the room. And they did see. They did.  
  
“That or the funniest. But, okay. We should compare Semblances and stuff soon because I’m going to be super-duper honest right now. My sister, Yang...” She rolled her hands at me once more as I took a pose behind her back, causing my sister and I’s roommates to show varying levels of interest. Even Weiss, before she caught herself. “Has the most dangerous Semblance in the room.”  
  
A moment of silence. Here laid fun. We hardly knew ye.  
  
“... Is it the power to give everyone advance warning of about a minute before she completely _enters_ that room?” Blake slowly turned her head nearly sideways when I clasped my hands together in front of me. “She’s not safe around a freeway. That’s for sure.”  
  
I fluttered my lashes at her and had to hold back a laugh when Taylor adjusted her glasses.  
  
She was human after all. Cool...and I had no idea why anyone would say she was ugly. Sure, she wasn’t Miss Goodwitch, but who was? She had great hair, her eyes were a little large on her face, yeah, but in a charming sort of way. And she had legs that went on forever. That made up for a lot.  
  
…I have no idea why I’d just thought all of that, but I had.  
  
“Don’t encourage her.” Ruby shook her head, ignorant of the bent of my thoughts as ever. “Her Semblance is - weird. All over the place. She can turn into a dragon-thingy or whatever, spit poison and breathe fire and swim in lava and all sorts of crazy stuff.” Ruby scratched her cheek while everyone gave the two of us a blank look. “The doctor says it's because she’s ‘self-realized her existence’? Or something? And it's caused her Semblance to evolve to its final possible state at an accelerated pace? …Or something?”  
  
It never got any easier to explain, did it?  
  
“Or something. I eat my wheaties.” I stopped posing and stood like a normal person, reminding Blake that she had to breathe and Taylor that she had to blink. “And he said he couldn’t imagine my Semblance going any further than it already has.”  
  
I knew who and what I was. I knew what I wanted, why I wanted and had the will to get it; that was harder than it sounded. Maybe. I was fucking awesome. That skewed the results some, if we’re being honest.  
  
“Yeah. That. He said that.” Ruby left my side with a huff to put her hands up in front of her face in lieu of a camera to take in the space. The beds, the people that would be using those beds and the area between where we’d put all our stuff… There wasn’t a lot of area. Not with four beds and my office. “You see that glass? That glass that’s been laced with Hard Light Dust and a titanium weave? That glass is there so that, when Yang is doing Semblance stuff, she doesn’t accidentally make us see pink Goliaths because she burped into a shell wrong.”  
  
I chuckled. “That was a fun Tuesday.”  
  
“And that’s why she stopped using a shed and actually used her money on something that wasn’t fancy imported soft drinks from Menagerie.”  
  
Good talk.  
  
“Fancy imported…” Blake’s lips curled in a shocking display of emotion, the first display she’d made since we’d met in the forest; disgust was its name. “You drink ‘Red Claw’? That’s disgusting.”  
  
Whoa. What?  
  
“It's an acquired taste,” I said as my good mood sank a little. I’d heard this before. Red Claw definitely wasn’t for everyone. I drank it for the odd feeling of nostalgia. “It's not that bad.”  
  
“I never thought I’d agree with Weiss about anything...but she was right about you.”  
  
That Weiss wasn’t there to hear it, her having gone to the bathroom nearly five minutes ago, was entirely incidental. Because of course it was. I’m sure.  
  
“ _Goddamn_ , Blake. Calm your tits. It’s a soft drink, not the combined distilled evil of the Grimm and my egg donor. What the hell is your problem?”  
  
“What’s my problem? What’s your problem? Egg donor? What does that even _mean_?”  
  
“It means I’m the sane one on that side of the family. That’s what it means.”  
  
Blake narrowed her eyes, held a hand up and mouthed something that looked a great deal like something that ryhmed with ‘what the fuck’. Kumquat duck, maybe.  
  
Seeing actual emotion on her face was _fascinating._ Like hearing a rusty door hinge, but entirely visual. That was the full sassy girl but, yet, the sass was missing. It was just lacking in _sass_.  
  
“Oh my god,” Taylor murmured as she kicked her luggage under a bed at random. That we were probably going to have to pull it out to arrange all this crap in a zany but somehow workable manner was something I didn’t say. She didn’t look like she was in the mood. “Is this going to be a thing? You people fighting over every little thing someone else says, then them getting mad about what you said? Is that it?”  
  
… Kind of, yeah.  
  
“Well, when you get two fit young women in one place, and they’ve just met and haven’t clicked yet and found out where they both stand in the social order, there will often be friction until-”  
  
“Like I was SAYING,” Ruby loudly interrupted before I could fill Taylor in on the facts of life. Lisa might have been _okay_ at being a social creature but, from what I could remember, that was a single sample among five. Everyone else had been kinda…empty. Considering how that was an observation from Taylor’s point of view... Ouch. “If Yang has the door closed, she's doing something scary and you should wait for her to open it herself."  
  
It took everything for me not to say “Or someone.” But, well, she was my sister. And I was surrounded by strangers. That would be _weird_. And she’d give me that look that said ‘I’m not surprised, just disappointed’ and I’d feel bad for most of the day. Not even I could handle that without twitching.  
  
She didn’t use that look much. That’s what gave it its ‘oomph’. Yep. Ruby didn’t do it enough to desensitize me to her disapproval, the evil genius.  
  
“Thank you all for listening. Well, almost all of you.” She hemmed and hawed. “Except for Weiss, who will have to have it explained to her by Yang before she uses her lab for its intended purpose: industrialized Grimm murder.”  
  
“... Are you using me as a punishment for Weiss?” I asked after mulling that over for a couple of seconds, giving everyone else enough time to start trying to figure out where they were going to sleep instead of paying attention to me.  
  
How terrible.  
  
“I’m thinking we could try and rig up some bunk beds. But, you know, not like bunk beds. Because that sounds like a good way to really hurt someone and I’m not a carpenter.” Ruby ignored me completely. “Taylor, Blake, how do you think we should go about doing this?  
  
“Well, I’ve got some books I’m not reading.” She gave a bedpost a pat. “If we put them here and the bed legs on _top_ -”  
  
“Oh my god, I’m a punishment for Wiess.”  
  
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked. That’s a terrible idea.” Ruby continued pretending that I was nothing more than a patch of blonde air. It hurt. Really. I’d never love another human being again… Also, yeah, I’d worn out my welcome. “Taylor?”  
  
“Buying actual bunk beds is something we could do. Or...or foldouts. Rollouts?” Taylor shrugged while Blake pouted. “That isn’t a serious suggestion. Just floating the option. Jesus though, we don’t have a lot of room, do we?”  
  
Weiss, hands still wet, returned just then, refreshed, to ask one thing. “What’s a Jesus?”  
  
Oop. Damage control time, Taylor. Make it good.  
  
“A very bad listener,” Was all Taylor said on that, giving Weiss a...not quite wrong idea, creating more questions than she’d answered. “It's a local thing.”  
  
Nice start.  
  
“Where though?” Weiss shook her head. “And what’s this about me needing to have something explained to me?”  
  
She’d heard that but nothing else? How?  
  
“You need to ask Yang about it,” Taylor pushed the responsibility off on me without a second thought. It made sense why she’d done it, seeing as explaining ‘what a Jesus was’ wouldn’t exactly do good things to her cover, but wow. Shoot me, why don’t you? “It's important.”  
  
“...Do I really?”  
  
A tight smile appeared on Taylor’s face. A smile that I only saw for a moment before she turned to help my sister start the process that was messing with the beds. “You might.”  
  
It was then that I began to suspect that this was, in fact, a punishment for _me._ Using your authority to punish your enemies was politics 101.  
  
I really should have seen it coming.  
  
… Also, Emotionally Crippled Teenage Faunus Ninja Catgirl was a surprisingly good book premise.  
  
That was a thing.  
  
==========  
  
A month or so later, I was in the middle of one of the greatest battles of my life. Of many people’s lives. A battle that could only be called ‘The Struggle’.  
  
Keeping a Dust-alternative store from going under while it was hemorrhaging money was hard work… Sometimes, I wondered if I’d made a mistake not selling the movie rights to at least one of my books instead of taking in royalties when the damned things finally came out.  
  
Sometimes. Then I looked into a mirror and called the dumb bitch looking back at me what she was. _Dumb_.  
  
Royalties were where the money was. And signing bonuses. Totes.  
  
“I regret everything I have ever done, am doing, and will do,” I calmly and rationally said out loud as I repeatedly slammed my head against my desk. “The end is nigh.”  
  
Not really. But it felt like it. It always did when this happened, and it always happened.  
  
Writer’s block. The great bane. Slayer of wordsmiths since time began, returned from the unholy pit that it had spawned from to plague me once more.  
  
I wasn’t being melodramatic. This fucking sucked.  
  
I wasn’t getting anywhere like this. In either inspiring creativity or in depleting my Aura. Hey, don’t knock it. Sometimes physically and metaphorically draining the Ego helped with the creative process. And, no, that wasn’t a euphemism. It was a coping mechanism.  
  
Not like it hurt, so fuck it, right? Not like I could get drunk so I’d had to cut some corners. Anyway, it wasn’t working today. Stopping before I put a dent into my non-chemically reactant workplace might be a good idea. And not giving ideas to my publisher before I’d made them solid.  
  
My publisher being Roman, through several proxies, he’d had the PR department feed the idea to my core-audience and now I was stuck. The force that was public expectations had been brought to bear against me. All because he was an asshole.  
  
I knew all the worst people. The very worst. Looking into the mirror often proved that much. And, no, that wasn’t a self loathing thing. I knew what I was, and I was great. It was just that Neo had seen a slasher movie at some point and had decided that appearing behind me while I looked into said mirror was one of the funniest fucking things she could ever do.  
  
… I had to admit, once the screaming stopped that first time, it was actually pretty funny. Still though. The fucking worst.  
  
A book appeared in my vision from overhead. I knew who it was without even looking. “Speak of the devil.”  
  
Blake wasn’t the worst person I’d ever met...but, uh…Blake. Blake was Blake. Nowadays, I get along with _Weiss_ better than I did my partner. The heiress, when she wasn’t up her own ass, was surprisingly good conversation; Blake had never quite forgiven me for drinking Red Claw, I don’t think. Probably because it reminded her of things she’d really prefer to never think about.  
  
Adam, maybe. He would be the sort to drink the stuff non-ironically, wouldn’t he?  
  
Blake didn’t handle things like that well. That she was also interested in me physically, obviously, while being unable to open up to me emotionally made life sort of tense.  
  
…I’d never had a more awkward blowjob in my life.  
  
“I take it you want my autograph then?” I asked rhetorically after giving the book a cursory glance. This was going to happen one day. One day, they’d find out that I’d written half of their favorite books under an assumed pen name with hunger in her eyes. It was inevitable. I recognized that as I gently plucked the book from her fingers. “Ah. Glow. Good choice.”  
  
The new Worm had taken some work. And some liberties with the original canon, as distorted through nearly two decades of it not being at all relevant to me training in the art of monster hunting. That I’d remembered it at all said a great deal about how much it had affected me, even if I hadn’t realized it at the time.  
  
Either way, once you got past the base, it was nothing like Worm at all. It was much more lighthearted, more of a young adult novel on the edge of full maturity. The change had been non-negotiable even if I’d wanted to go back to its roots. Pulling together the feeling of the original, or even trying, would have had it held up in bookstore backrooms everywhere till the end of time. At best.  
  
At worst, I’d have been picking my financial teeth off the sidewalk without a dentist in sight.  
  
Topics referring to depression and unbelieavably incompetent authority figures were not the best topics to play with in a world where keeping the average level of happiness up was important, no.  
  
A fond and practiced hand counted the earmarks in the pages, the bent corners… I’d never been the type to get mad at that sort of thing. It just meant the reader had liked the book and I’d never understood the point to collector’s editions, keeping something in a box. One, two, fifteen and an added zero with four more on top. Not bad for a thousand pages. Not at all. “Had fun reading it?”  
  
“I thought it was enlightening.” A dry tone made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end and turned my smile brittle. “But you could say that I had - fun.”  
  
I could actually hear and _feel_ my neck click like a ratchet as I slowly turned towards the voice, wishing that my desk chair was one of those that let you spin and not a high-backed, fluff-filled monstrosity.  
  
That had not been the voice of our catgirl team member dealing with the heart-breaking paradox of wanting to get close to people while being unwilling to take the risk they might get hurt. That wasn’t even the voice of our local super rich girl, coping with the fact that she enjoyed commoner trash more than she should. That was the voice of our resident team trainer and god killer, full of amused annoyance.  
  
Despite my wishes that Ruby or, hell, Zwei had taken up the art of mimicry as a hobby, I found myself face to face with Taylor.  
  
…Zwei was a really smart dog. Maybe it was a disguise?  
  
“The part where Brian’s and Taylor’s relationship was written to showcase just how petty the difference between Faunus and Humans are was inspired.” She said that sentence with a smile, an actual smile. I knew how to read people. Shit, I could and did have entire conversations with Neo that involved her just shrugging at me for an hour... But I was getting so many conflicting signals from Taylor, I doubted even she knew how she felt about all this. “I’m not sure about Piggot’s redemption arc though. People don’t change that easily.”  
  
That weird thing where she didn’t look at people before talking to them was just the most obvious problem when it came to dealing with Taylor. Insect powers were some bullshit.  
  
“It's a book for young adults. What am I supposed to do, say that no one can change? They’d laugh me out of the room,” I defended my work with the realities of the business. I also tried to ignore the buzzing I could hear outside our window. “Did Blake figure it out and tell you?”  
  
Taylor shook her head. “No. I figured it out on my own. You might not notice, but you write like you talk sometimes.”  
  
“So… You just guessed and I confirmed it?” I nodded tersely. “Well played.”  
  
“Maybe it was.” Taylor didn’t confirm one way or the other. “If it hadn’t been for Blake recommending this book to me, I’d have never confronted you. It isn’t my place… This book makes me nostalgic for some reason...”  
  
“One of the characters having your name would do that, I’d think. It would be easy to insert yourself into the story if you identify with them, even if it's just because of a name.” I doubled down on my assumed cluelessness without hesitation. Just like she was hiding who she was, so was I...and she didn’t need to know what happened after. No one did. “Is that what it is? Did you identify yourself with the protagonist?”  
  
“I don’t think I’ve ever had such a - close - relationship with my best friend. Or ever been so...optimistic.” Taylor’s voice was dry enough to make me want to reach for the chapstick. “But I think I did. Sometimes.”  
  
I nodded once more, like a bobblehead before I craned my head to look around the room. The only one in it was Ruby, wearing a pair of headphones, so I could be a little more open. “Then my job as a writer is done, yeah? Did you finish?”  
  
Taylor went unnaturally still, her lips thinning out into a narrow line as her open body language vanished; now the lines of her body felt predatory, her hands held up and in front of her in a way reminiscent of a praying mantis at rest; the chrome of her prosthetic nice and bright. “It was a good ending. Very thematic.”  
  
She didn’t _look_ like she thought it was very good. Of course, it had been a happy ending. ‘Taylor’ had done what she’d had to do. She’d pulled everyone together, made them set aside their differences and led them to victory. Then, she’d gotten the chance to go home to her mom and her dad and all her friends.  
  
It was the only way it could have ended… I’d never been good at downer endings. I could see why she might not have liked it though.  
  
What with the pair of holes that had been put into her skull and the missing arm, I could definitely see.  
  
“You don’t look like you thought it was good,” I started in an open-handed offer. “Do you want to talk about it?”  
  
“No. It was good. It’s something personal that makes it difficult for me.” Her head smoothly shifted on her neck; nervous sweat started between my cleavage. “We do need to talk about royalties though.”  
  
I looked back at her, quiet.  
  
She looked back at me, not so much. “And we need to talk about where you got your inspiration.”  
  
Well. Looked like the game was up.  
  
Crap.


	9. Fire and Lightning and Everything in Between

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A YDCT AU, where Yang writes out her unresolved and possibly slightly weird sexual attraction for a close friend.
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/19043482/chapters/45231835
> 
> Read this (and the first chapter of this thing we've got) to get an idea of what's going on!

Nora stood at a crossroads. A crossroads she was actually thinking about instead of doing what had first popped into her head.  
  
That didn’t happen often. Nora knew what she wanted and she took it. If it didn’t work out, which it sometimes didn’t, she didn’t care. It was better that she’d gone for it, took the chance instead of letting it pass her by.  
  
Who dares, wins. It wasn’t a bad philosophy to live by, even if it hurt sometimes. Sometimes, it even hurt a lot. It was what had led to Ren and her deciding that being ‘together, together’ wasn’t for them. She’d never trade what they’d had then for anything, their try at being something more than just best friends, but it - just hadn’t worked out.  
  
They’d always be together. That would always be true. Just not together like _that_ … Nora had gotten over that years ago.  
  
Mostly.  
  
It had really, really hurt, okay? A lesser woman would have fallen over and waited to die. Crawled into bed and accepted that they were always going to be alone and unloved and childless and… And Nora wasn’t a lesser woman.  
  
But, yeah, the crossroads she was standing at was really bugging her. On one hand, she could screw with Blake and Weiss’ heads by informing them that Yang was carrying around a real monster in her pants. If Yang said she couldn’t use it to pound nails into wood, Nora would say she was lying. That was how big it was.  
  
Nora knew how to measure objects with a glance. It wasn’t always exact but she was good enough at it that she was right more often than not. Not being a creep made it hard to get solid (she should do stand up!) numbers, but she’d eventually come to the conclusion that Yang was nine-inches to an entire foot long.  
  
It made Nora sweat just thinking about a dick that large. It also got her panties a little sticky if anyone asked. Except not really. If anyone asked for some reason, any reason, she’d be getting out Magnhild for a round of limb crippling.  
  
What limb? Any limb. She wasn’t picky. That was personal stuff and they really should have known better.  
  
On the other hand though she could keep this knowledge to herself instead of using it for a cheap laugh. Leave the girls in Yangbang (Nora could make jokes all day out of that) out of the race for Yang’s meat a while longer so that she had a better chance at keeping it all to herself. Nora had been serious when she’d thought that Yang could have been her best friend if not for Ren having already taken that spot and just about every other best that Nora could think of. Besides one.  
  
She didn’t have a best sex friend; that hadn’t worked out with Ren either. Nora might not have been looking for anything serious right now (her heart was a fragile, maidenly thing that had yet to heal), but that...?  
  
Nora wiped her face with her towel and walked away, ignoring the argument that she’d nearly interrupted to hit the showers.  
  
She could do that.  
  
==========  
  
I wasn’t sure what had crawled up Blake and Weiss’ combined asses, but something had clearly happened while I’d been busy making sure that Jaune didn’t kill himself by accident. When and how, I had no clue. I didn’t need a map to read the mood normally. In this case, with these two people,I was able to read the mood from space; shitty. Neither of them wanted to explain why that was either, at least not clearly.  
  
What did the weather have to do with anything? Everything, I guess. That was why I’d skipped out of the room after I’d taken a shower and gone to the library. To read.  
  
I know, I know. That sounded weird, right? That sounded funny. I didn’t seem to be the type. I was blonde and stacked and sex on two legs. Hee hee hah hah go fuck yourself, you fourth grade reading level sack of _shit_.  
  
… Kids were assholes and I might have needed a therapist. Or not, seeing as I’d sublimated my personal issues into a highly successful career in literature. Childhood trauma was forever. But so was money. Money might not buy happiness, but it sure made it a lot easier to find.  
  
That knowledge that I’d completely outclassed little Bobby from eighth grade in every way that mattered would have to do when it came to keeping me warm at night. That and the outrageous amounts of dangerously kinky sex I was having. That too.  
  
It would have to do.  
  
“You are a very hard person to find, you know that?”  
  
Quiet time was over.  
  
“Or maybe you’re just not all that good at finding people.” When I didn’t jump or scream or both at once, Nora took a spot at my side with a huff. I’d smelled her when she’d been a couple rows away; the smell of explosive compounds and ozone was a distinctive one. She hadn’t even had a chance. “It isn’t as if anyone could pull this…” I ran a hand down a hip. “Off like I do.”  
  
If you’ve got it, flaunt it. Unless it was money. Then you were just being a dick.  
  
“Well, when you say it like that, that just makes me sound like I said something silly.” Nora hummed and pulled a book of her own down, flicking the pages like they were a deck of cards and she was about to play a game of poker before putting it back, bored; Then out came another, upside down; she wasn’t here for the books then. “I checked the gym, the forge, the quad, the cafeteria, your dorm-”  
  
“You didn’t check that first?”  
  
“And give you a chance to escape because I was predictable?” Nora scoffed and I couldn’t help the extra curl that came to my lips as an invisible weight fell off my back. One of many, but any was better than none. We shared the same, crazy wavelength and it showed. “You’re not going to trick me that easy, little missy.”  
  
Those were fighting words.  
  
“Little?” The hip that I’d just been suggestively stroking took her in the upper arm, bumping her less than a centimeter away. She then did the same back, right in my left upper thigh and it came out much the same. Nora was made out of bedrock, I’d give her that. “That’s some big talk from someone that’s got an inch on Weiss.”  
  
Five and one was five and one. Not much difference there from a flat five, now was there?  
  
“An inch? Just an inch? How dare you! I have way more on Weiss than that!” Nora gasped as she gave me a cartoonishly exaggerated look of offense. She even put her hand to her mouth and reared back, swaying on her feet like she was about to faint. She even squinted really hard to force a tear out. That was some dedication and, if not for the smile lines on her cheeks, I’d have almost thought it was halfway convincing. “I’ll have you know I’m big where it counts!”  
  
I laughed through my nose with a quick exhale. I had to be polite. This was a library after all. “Your heart?”  
  
“No, you dork!” She paused. “Well, yeah, that too. I do my cardio.” In a strange and confusing mirror to what I’d done earlier, Nora smoothly ran her hand over the curve of her hip, over her skirt and onto her thigh. “But I make sure to do my squats too.”  
  
“Yeah. I know.” I lowered my book as a touch of bemusement found itself mixing with my good mood; That had almost sounded like a pickup line. Looked like one too. But, what with Nora being Nora, that may have just been a statement of fact. “I saw you at the presses today. You were really putting away those reps.”  
  
Nora’s squint somehow became even _squintier_ , the smile lines on her cheeks smoothing out behind her hand as she got on her toes; right in my face, or as much as one could when the person you were trying to stare down had more than half a foot on you. “Are you messing with me?”  
  
“Not right now, no? Why?”  
  
“Yeaaaaah. No. Nawp, nay, no. I got sick of this the first time around with Renny. I tried this the easy way, now here’s the hard way.” Nora fell back on her heels and finally dropped her hand from her mouth. “I think you’re hot. I think you’re hot and I think you’ve got what it takes to not break when I drop the bass on your pelvis.”  
  
The smile on my face turned brittle as my view of reality took a devastating hit. It hadn’t been the best before and now there was a hole below the waterline that needed patching.  
  
Excuse me?  
  
“I’m not joking. And this isn’t complicated. Don’t make it that way. You’ve got a dick like a hammer and I want to be the nail.” Nora continued shamelessly, the volume of her words perfectly library friendly. The right amount of library friendly for this kind of talk, almost inaudible even though we were right next to each other in an out-of-character show of discretion. “Was that too mysterious for you?”  
  
If that was mysterious then I should have been a detective, because I could read her motives like it was scrolling to the left on the side of an nationalized Atlesian company’s New Year advertising blimp.  
  
“What the shit, no, what?” I breathed into my copy of a hundred year old deer hunting manual before sliding it back into the shelf it came from. Maybe not the same spot, but I found that I didn’t much care right then. “I’m not stupid. Holy shit, Nora. Aren’t you and Ren a thing?”  
  
If they were, I’d seriously miscalculated when it came to Nora. And my life. Her being this upfront about how badly she wanted in my pants had shaken me. I knew she was straightforward, but I hadn’t known she was like _this_.  
  
I didn’t like being on the backfoot. Not at all… The promise of sex in my immediate future was making that easier to bear though.  
  
“Noooope,” Nora laughed, sounding almost - sad - even with the very real smile that was on her face. There was clearly a story there. She’d implied that she’d done this with Ren, so... “When I said we aren’t ‘together together’, I meant it. We’re just the bestest of best friends. We’ll be together forever but, you know, not like-” She stuck her tongue out and made a little ‘bleh’ sound. “That doesn’t matter. You get it. Are you in or are you out?”  
  
That...wasn’t really even a question. Like, sure, I hadn’t really thought of Nora as a serious option before because holy _fuck_ had Ren and her looked like a thing (I couldn’t imagine a reason why she’d lie to me about this), but it wasn’t hard to switch it up. She was hot as hell. Short red hair, big blue eyes, the third largest chest of our year that wasn’t mine and thighs that could crush boulders. Her personality was good too. She was funny, weird, liked when things went boom and knew how to take a joke and run with it.  
  
She was definitely someone that I’d like to know better. Now that the obstacle that was me not being a homewrecker had just vanished, there was only one response I could have.  
  
I wasn’t even going to bother asking how she’d found out about what I was packing. That wasn’t important. Hell, for all I knew she’d just guessed and I’d answered.  
  
Hell of a way to make a guess though...  
  
“You know what? Yeah. Now that I know where you stand, I’m in. Also, if this is going to be the tone for our back-and-forth, well...” I showed Nora how you _really_ stare someone down. From a height, with a slight condescending lean and a power pose that could run all of Vale for a week if you turned it into energy. The effect that was red bleeding into the purple of my pupils was a nice touch as well. I hadn’t practiced this in the mirror for nothing. “You don’t know what you’re in for.”  
  
Neither did I, but I wasn’t going to say that. Who did you take me for, Jaune?  
  
“Well, duh. Of course I don’t.” Nora kept looking up at me as a light flush rose to her cheeks; not a single step back. It probably never even crossed her mind. “But if you’re like this before we even hit the bed, whoo.” She began fanning her face as a giggle left her throat. “You, uh - have any condoms?”  
  
Goddamn. Right to the meat of it. Very Nora.  
  
“You’re not shy about what you want, huh? I can respect that.” If my bodysuit had been able to talk though, it wouldn’t have had anything nice to say. It was the only thing keeping my dick on the inside of my thigh instead of tenting out the front of my cargo pants right now. Poor thing. “And I think I’m going to have to go pick up a box.”  
  
“You don’t have any on you? That’s some bad planning.” Nora didn’t try to pull away when I put a hand on her lower back, just above her bottom. She didn’t say anything about me using that hand to push her towards the exit either. It was becoming increasingly less likely that this was a joke. “What would you have done if I’d said that was a deal breaker?”  
  
Been disappointed and, if I couldn’t find Neo, I’d deal with it myself. I was a big girl.  
  
“I didn’t say I didn’t have any on me. I’ve actually got three.” The hand on her back moved around her middle in a half hug and Nora gave me some cheery side eye for it. That was as far as PDA went then. Message received. “I just don’t think it’ll be enough for you.”  
  
Nora’s next round of laughter came out as a startled guffaw, loud enough that it had people on the other side of the courtyard looking up in surprise. She also made up for our quiet time in the library by padding on some length, laughing for so long that we were nearly at the bullhead pads by the time it trailed off into giggles. “Oh, wow, that’s funny. Look at you, you big ol’ stud, you. You’re funny.”  
  
“Aren’t I?”  
  
Two boxes. She’d hit me with the glove and that couldn’t go unanswered.  
  
I was going to make her eat those words. And at least one load.  
  
==========  
  
Nora’s theory that Yang had mob connections somewhere had never been more solid than they were now.  
  
She’d been joking around when she’d brought it up with her team. When Ruby had taken too long to tell Nora that she was wrong and that Yang was on the up-and-up, that had been the start. All the talk about how Yang got out of jail in an hour without any problems, that had been the middle. When Yang had hailed a cab right off the bullhead and told them to take them to a casino?  
  
Well, it wasn’t the end yet, but it was getting there. It was the stage right before the end, the stage where Yang got herself recognized by the casino’s front desk workers and they handed her a key to a hotel room. It was the stage where they asked her if Yang wanted ‘her regular’ and she waved it off to order a ‘number four’ and some food.  
  
It was at the stage where Yang’s order was at their room before they even got there, just sitting in front of the tiny kitchenette right next to the bar and mini fridge combo. Where the sheets had just been changed and the complimentary chocolate mints had been put on their pillows.  
  
All Nora had wanted to do was scratch an itch and, instead, she’d been pulled around Vale and up into a high-class hotel room in one of the better parts of town. All she’d wanted was a quickie in the gardens. A fancy hotel hadn’t even crossed her mind.  
  
Now though? Now that she was here? Now she was _invested_.  
  
Also, she’d been jumping on the king-sized mattress since they’d entered the room. If anything was going to happen, she was going to get Yang’s money’s worth out of the experience; Strong springs and a soft mattress were important. If the bed couldn’t take her jumping on it, it sure as heck wasn’t going to take what was about to happen.  
  
Nora had been serious about the bass and how hard it dropped. Serious as a heart attack.  
  
“How do you like to do it?” Yang started as she shucked her jacket, dropping it to the floor with a thump and a metallic jingle. That the only thing covering her up on top was a skintight, sheer bodysuit didn’t seem to bother her any. She wasn’t even wearing a bra. Nora could tell. Also, she hadn’t known that boobs could get that big. You learned something new everyday. “With music? With the TV on? Or do you just want to hear us and the bedsprings?”  
  
“Ooh, ooh! I got it!” Nora pulled her legs out from under herself on the next jump, leading to her landing on the bed butt-first and with her scroll out. “I’ve got heavy metal, regular metal, rock, glam rock, rap, pop, country, alternative-”  
  
Yang interrupted Nora’s lineup (she had eclectic tastes) by unbuttoning her pants. Nora was much too busy vibrating in place to continue… It had been a while. “I think I’ll just put the TV on high, if that’s okay. Picking out a list that’ll last a couple hours sounds like too much work when we could be doing something better.”  
  
“I haven’t arranged these,” Nora did not quite agree as she affected a sullen pout. Yang was right but saying so wasn’t something that Nora would admit to right then. She’d get to putting these in order. Eventually. Ask her again around the end of the semester. “And a couple hours, huh?”  
  
“Keep sounding like you don’t believe me when I’m talking game and I’m going to get upset,” Yang warned playfully as the pants joined her jacket on the floor and **_oh god, oh fuck, it was bigger than she’d thought._** “You wouldn’t like me when I’m upset.”  
  
Nora had known how long it was. She’d figured that out pretty quick, once she’d realized that Yang’s sausage was more like three put together. It hadn’t been hard for her to do. But she hadn’t thought about how _thick_ it was going to be.  
  
The redhead held up a fist, gave it a long look, then put it back down while Yang looked on, clearly laughing at her as the blonde fit their fingers into the neck of their suit and began pulling it down their shoulders; like a snake shedding their skin without all the gross parts, that was gone too and Nora got to see what she had to work with in all its glory.  
  
That was why Yang had had a jar of lubricant jelly sent up along with the boxes of condoms, wasn’t it? Nora should have seen that coming.  
  
Yang wasn’t a fan of making jokes that made her look smaller after the punchline. Nora knew...that..  
  
… Wait.  
  
“Sorry that this is taking so long. I don’t use condoms all that often. It can be hard finding stuff in my size on demand.” Yang gave the condom in her palm a short look, shrugged as she grabbed herself by the shaft and fit it over the fist-sized head attached to it. “They have like one of these per store. Crazy, right?”  
  
There were probably ten people in all of Vale that needed them. And all of them were porn stars or giants. No duh they were hard to find.  
  
“I have homework,” Nora blurted out oddly. Odd even to her as she rolled down her luckiest pair of cotton panties, the one with the tiny pink bow on them and the new wet spot on the front; those fell over the edge of the bed along with her skirt in short order. Laundry day was going to be loaded this week. “So, uh, two hours sounds good? That sounds good, right?”  
  
That was an excuse. It was an excuse and Yang knew it. They shared the same classes after all. Also, it was a weekend. Even if she’d had a workload worth worrying about, she could have had it done in a day if she knuckled down.  
  
“You should set a timer then, if you’ve got homework.” Yang smirked and rose the volume on the TV, on a comedy channel, all the way up to seventy. “Education is important.”  
  
Gods that was embarrassing. She’d already said it though. Too bad.  
  
Nora made sure to put a timer on, doubly sure, tossing her scroll aside after she was done; wrapped up in her shirt and bra for a safe landing while Yang joined her at the head of the bed on her back. With her head on a pillow, golden hair fanning out every which way. With her latex-coated cock standing tall like a scary, blue, throbbing tower as Yang shamelessly jerked herself off like Nora wasn’t right there.  
  
And that might have been true. Nora wasn’t normally like this. She wasn’t much of a thinker. She was a doer. She did things and hoped for the best. When she met a problem, she smashed it. Easy. When it applied. It wasn't like she could get her hammer for this mess.  
  
She’d have been talking up a storm, normally. But this wasn’t normal.  
  
Nora was intimidated. There. She’d said it. Nora would have thought that Yang’s prick being a shade of blue would have made it _less_ intimidating but, well, yeah. That didn’t happen. Now Yang’s monster was just blue and shiny and veiny aaaaand now Nora was making a mess on the bed.  
  
What? It was still hot. That she just noticed that Yang was slathering a heavy layer of gel all over herself, lubing herself up for her just made it even more so.  
  
“Come on, Nora. Cat got your tongue? Didn’t you say you were going to drop the bass? Didn’t you say you wanted someone that wouldn’t break?” Yang beckoned her forward with a finger. Laughter came out of the TV. “You got me. Right here. Or were you just talking?”  
  
Now that just wasn’t fair.  
  
“Hey, now. Shhhh. I didn’t ask for comments from the peanut gallery. I’m figuring out my strategy.” Nora found her tongue again, right next to her need to not make herself into a liar. She’d started this. That meant she was the one that was going to have to end it. Getting cold feet because she was getting what she asked for was stupid. Really stupid. Aura made problems like this small time and worrying about her organs getting punched up into her neck was a civilian problem. “I can’t climb you without a plan.”  
  
“Climb me? It's a penis, not a mountain. You sure changed your tone quick, didn’t you?” Yang just about cackled as she cupped the crown of said penis with a palm, coating that as well with a smooth finish while Nora’s embarrassed blush threatened to turn her chest into ash with the heat. “Oh, wow, that went right down to your stomach. You okay?”  
  
Now she was just being _mean._  
  
“... I’m going to snap you in half,” Nora growled, the words coming out an octave higher than she’d wanted it to as, after a short and heated pause, she started the climb; she straddled Yang like she would have a bucking bronco if the bronco had a chance of throwing her off. If Yang didn’t have bruises on her hips from how tightly Nora’s thighs were squeezing down, she wasn’t working out enough. “Like a Kit-Kat bar.”  
  
Yang gave her a blank stare. “The hell is a Kit-Kat bar?”  
  
Oh. Right. People didn’t magically know about the things that she saw and heard whenever she overdosed on coffee. Nora had forgotten.  
  
“Your spine.”  
  
Good save.  
  
“Oh. I see. This makes sense.” Yang nodded at her answer with a thoughtful look. She also got herself a handful of Nora’s bottom at the same time, giving it a squeeze while the redhead pushed back and into it; those were some strong fingers. “That’s hot.”  
  
And that was when Nora became all smiles. She couldn’t help it. It wasn’t that she was into giving pain or anything, like some kind of weirdo, but having someone play along with the things she said and did and not look at her like she was crazy was nice. Not that she cared about what people thought of her, but it was nice. “You know, I can see this becoming a regular thing.”  
  
“I can see about clearing my schedule for some Nora time too,” Yang agreed wholeheartedly, the meaty _smack_ of her cock slapping into Nora’s lower back as she flexed coming in as an accentuation. The ginger jumped slightly with a giggle, startled at just how _high up_ she’d been hit. “Somewhere around morning gym and before I go to sleep around ten.”  
  
“That’s almost all day. What are you trying to say? That I’m worth finding whenever I’m free?” Nora rapidly blinked, a smile still firmly in place when Yang rolled her hips and ran the slick heat of her dick up and down the crack of her ass. Yang didn’t make any excuses for that and just stuck her tongue out when Nora bounced playfully against one of Yang’s thrusts, batting it away and leaving her open for the predictable return and rebound on one of her butt cheeks. “Or that I’d be free whenever you wanted me to be?”  
  
“I like to keep my options open.” Smooth. “But come on, Valkyrie. This isn’t going to climb itself,” Teased Yang, throwing in a spank as she did so before letting go. “Of course, I could just flip you over and bring the mountain to you…”  
  
“Over my dead body.” Nora scoffed and unclenched her thighs, a pang of nervous excitement hitting her as she found that she had to get onto her feet if she wanted to get Yang in. Fun-sized people problems. “The floor better be reinforced, because I’m about to rock your world.”  
  
Reaching down, Nora grabbed Yang behind the tip and maneuvered it to her entrance with the entirety of her focus. Just holding it felt like she was handling an object as wide around as a softball. Even with how Aura worked and its uses when it came to two consenting adults, she had to wonder how it was going to fit.  
  
Lubrication was no concern. Even without Yang having done what she’d done to cut down on friction, Nora was already leaking like a faucet that someone hadn’t turned the tap all the way on. The short pause she took when she felt the beginnings of her being split open wasn’t even worth talking about, not when a slight application of gravity had Yang inside of her without any meaningful resistance.  
  
“O-oh f _uuuuuuu-uuck.”_ That single word, stretched out over almost a foot of cock, turned into a meaningless grinding noise from deep in her throat. From around the same place Yang’s dick seemed to be. At least that was how it felt like when Nora’s perfect plan to drive the blonde through the bed they were on was put on hold, thanks to her pussy being stretched out further than it ever had before; Distracting was an understatement. “Blood. Where?”  
  
Nora’s command of Remnant Common was a masterful one. Astounding.  
  
“Where do I keep all this blood when I’m not using it? In my body of course.” Yang easily translated Nora’s entire question with a snicker and another stinging slap on the butt while Nora continued to bend her knees. “You’re not the only one that does cardio~.”  
  
“Al-ways something to say, h-uh? That’s my t-hing,” Nora forced out as she put the slap on a list of things that she’d need to pay Yang back for. “Gonna shu-t you up good.”  
  
“Oh no.” Yang gasped, the manic light behind her eyes positively dancing as she added a touch of downward force by putting her hands on Nora’s hips, both of them, and pushing down. It looked like her patience was running out. To be fair, so was Nora’s, but _rude_. “Whatever will I do?”  
  
Nora leaned forwards, both hands slamming down on Yang’s shoulders with bed stressing force. “You are just-” With a roll of her hips to loosen herself up and a lift against Yang’s grip, Nora started moving. Time to put the big girl pants on. “Asking for-” Nora clenched her teeth and blinked a bead of sweat out of her eye, oddly proud of the fact that she was at all understandable during her rise to the top. “IT!”  
  
With that roar, Nora slammed herself down as hard as she could; a double-edged sword. On one hand, she couldn’t see anything now. Her vision had just whited out and her ears were filled with the frantic sound of her heartbeat as her womb moved a foot up in her body. On the other hand, when her vision was replaced by spots instead of that endless, colorless expanse, Yang’s infuriating smile was gone.  
  
There was also a dent in the wall behind the headboard now, but who cared about that? Nora wasn’t nervous anymore. She’d just taken the first step towards victory, after all. Its taste was sweet. Yang’s expression of silent shock as the bed groaned beneath them, short as it was before it morphed into a crooked grin, was even sweeter.  
  
Also, this bed was really strong. Really, _really_ strong. Wow. Maybe Yang getting this room in particular hadn’t just been for show after all? The first bed she’d done that on had lost its legs. All of them. There hadn’t been a splinter bigger than a matchstick.  
  
That little inn on the side of the road had thrown her and Ren out faster than Nora had emptied their breakfast buffet.  
  
Gasping for air, Nora returned Yang’s grin with some of her personal, manic flair. Her hips rose and fell once more with a vague wish that she had something to bite on. A pillow, maybe. _Something_ as she repeatedly went from stuffed to empty, the shock of Yang’s dick pushing out the pale flesh of her stomach with every bounce messing with her breathing something fierce.  
  
Fixing that problem was as easy as, well, _breathing_ though _._ If you couldn’t take a gut punch, from the inside or not, could you even call yourself a Huntress? Nora couldn’t even call that a problem at all, not with a straight face. Pushing through was as simple as letting gravity do its work, that and momentum.  
  
Nora wouldn’t stop, not even for a second. She wouldn’t slow down. She wouldn’t hesitate. As soon as her cheeks clapped on Yang’s thighs she was already up again, taking advantage of the recoil to fight back against the clinging grip of her own pussy holding tight to Yang’s rod; A civilian wouldn’t have stood a chance when it came to the absolute _ruin_ that Nora was bringing down upon her lower half.  
  
To be fair, a civilian couldn’t have handled Yang’s end of things either.  
  
Nora had heard that Yang didn’t sweat. Much. Yang was definitely sweating now though, around her collarbone and brow. Droplets shook and flew from their body with every impact, their breasts shaking and jiggling in quaking waves even as Nora’s old friend gravity tried to keep them flat against the blond’s chest or spilling off to the sides under their own weight.  
  
The ginger took her hands off of Yang’s shoulders to sit upright with a coo, putting them on her knees for support so that she could see more of the person she was riding into next week; Their contracting abs and crackling Aura. At Yang’s fingers, at the thumb plastered to Nora’s mound and moving in erratic but measured circles on Nora’s clit. There was no rhyme or reason there, it kept her guessing and she supposed that was the point.  
  
It almost threw Nora off of hers. It might have. It did, in the half second she spent pushing her waist towards Yang for an instinctual demand of _more_. The added and unpredictable sensation of this attack from the inside and out; her g-spot being crushed beneath an unbending wall of burly muscle while her clit was played with like it was a joystick and Yang was about to lose the game nearly whited her out again.  
  
“N-no fair!” Nora said plaintively, blinking the spots away for the second time that afternoon. Yang just laughed as she swung her hips back into Nora on the next fall, no longer content to just stay still. The spots came back with a vengeance. “You’re not supposed to fight back!”  
  
“I’m not supposed - to fight back, huh? I’m - just supposed to lay back - and take it, huh? How many times have you - cum? Twice? More? I want to cum too!” Yang breathed out between the thumps and slaps and electric buzzing of their combined Aura’s activating as they collided with one another. “You’re so - tight I can’t tell when you’re - clenching down!”  
  
Nora gasped, unsure as to whether she should start laughing or be offended. What Yang had said was so ridiculous she had no idea how to feel about it. She’d also begun molesting her own chest, plucking at her nipples and throwing out balance altogether for it. “I thought that being tight was a good thing! That it felt good?” Nora purred. “Do I feel good, Yang? Does my pussy feel good around your dick? Do I make you want to _scream_?”  
  
It sure sounded like it. It sounded like Yang was _frustrated_. Like the number of times that Nora had come was _important_ to her. Why was that, Nora wondered?  
  
“Of course it's a good thing! It's great! What do you think!?” Yang’s smile showed a great deal more teeth than any smile should. “And I’m fine! Totally fine!  
  
Yang could be such a _man._  
  
“Come on, Yang, you don’t have to lie to me. Stop being silly. You want to pop your top, don’t you? You want to drop your load in me right here, right now and you’re getting _anxious_.” Nora latched onto this new, assumed advantage without regrets. “What are you waiting for, Yang? What’s stopping you?”  
  
Yang didn’t respond, her smile frozen and eyes questioning.  
  
… It was crazy how expressive Yang could be without saying anything. Where had she picked that up from? Did she practice that in a mirror?  
  
“I’ve come three times alread-y.” Nora held up three fingers for emphasis, just as that number turned to four. Oops. Her mistake. “What do you have all those boxes for?” Her eyelids fluttered and the slapping of flesh on flesh got a little wetter but she didn’t stop moving. “Decoration? Weren’t you going to empty them?”  
  
“... You know what? Yeah. Yeah, you have a point. Why am I holding back? I’ve got a quota to work through.” Yang puckered her lips, obviously having come to a decision. That hadn’t taken much from Nora. Her balls must have felt like they were in a vice or something. “I’m going to fill you up like a water balloon.”  
  
Nora found herself stunned with shock when, out of the blue, Yang pulled her ankles out from under her and ended her streak of near perfect hops; With her legs out straight, her feet going out past Yang’s neck she had no leverage. Nothing to stop her from taking a plunge and staying there, sitting like a dummy as she tangled her own fingers in her hair and hyperventilated as Yang made good on her promise.  
  
Or as much as she could make good on it, through a Huntsman-grade condom.  
  
Yang groaned through clenched teeth and that was when Nora noticed the _difference_. The tip had always been squishy, and had only been getting squishier with every knock on her cervix. It had become a sort of padding, near the end, that tiny bubble of Yang’s juices. That, and a smug reminder that Yang wanted all of her so _bad_ but had to be happy with feeling Nora’s walls through a reinforced latex layer instead of raw.  
  
That bubble wasn’t so tiny now though. Not at all. It was big and getting bigger and it warmed her up from the inside like hot chocolate that had just come off the stove, each grunt from Yang an early warning for yet another rope of semen added to the protection-straining mess that she was squeezing around; that was different, at least when it came to Yang.  
  
That was the only part of Yang that gave way when Nora came. And she was cumming. The pain of her nearly pulling her own hair out by the roots was nothing compared to the muscle locking waves crashing through her body, her fall not the only surprise she had to deal with.  
  
Nora hadn’t been prepared for _this_...and that was why, when she fell over on her back she didn’t even try to stop herself. She couldn’t have done anything other than twitch or gurgle anyway as Yang slipped out of her as a consequence in a single move. All of her from root to crown.  
  
That Nora wasn’t sure what time it was when she found herself looking up at the ceiling was - sort of expected? It wasn’t something that had ever happened to her before, but it sounded like she’d had a good time. That she still felt _full_ even though, with a turn of her head, she was able to see Yang rummaging through a freshly opened box of condoms? Not so much.  
  
She hadn’t seen Yang’s ass before now but, really, she should have known it was as good as the rest of her. If Nora hadn’t been catching her breath, she’d have been rearing up for world-class smack.  
  
That was still on Nora’s list, after all.  
  
“Why do I feel like there’s something still inside of me?” Nora croaked. Yang jumped and Nora was the one that got to laugh this time. “What year is it? Has it been eight months already?”  
  
“What? No. That’s just - does it really feel like a baby?” Yang, after a short pause to move her hair out of her face, seemed to swell up with pride. That and lust as her erection bobbed under a new coating of red. “Man, I knew my loads were heavy, but I’ve never heard that one before.” She paused again. “Of course, the only person I could ask doesn’t talk…”  
  
“How would I know that, dummy? Do I look like someone who’d know? Think real carefully, Yang.” Nora filed away that tidbit about that other woman without comment. It wasn’t like they were together, after all. They were just having fun. “There’s only one option that doesn’t lead with broken legs.”  
  
“Man, what’s with you and legs? But, nah, you don’t. You should stop reading into things.” Yang shook her head and tossed the box to the side, the condoms in between her fingers finding themselves on the nightstand in short order. “The condom got stuck.”  
  
“... Huh?”  
  
“Just being honest, but you’re the tightest girl I’ve ever been with; Probably all those squats that did it. When you fell back you kinda, uh, stripped me?” Yang coughed. “You might be wondering what that sticky patch on your stomach is.”  
  
“Not...really?” Nora reflexively put a finger in a patch on her stomach that was, indeed, sticky. The pearl white strand that came along when she pulled away said it all. “I think I know already.”  
  
She had a scroll after all.  
  
“You caught the last of it while you were staring into the void, yeah. Like, five minutes ago? Yeah. Five.” Yang took a seat on the edge of the bed, remote in hand to start flicking through channels like they weren’t talking about how Nora had gone catatonic for a whole five minutes. Also, like they hadn’t just had sex. “I would have tried pulling it out but I didn’t want to be between your legs if you woke up angry.”  
  
“Why would I wake up angry? That was great!” Nora tried lifting her head and gave that up when the room began to spin. Classic dehydration symptoms. That’s what she got for thinking Yang was full of it, she guessed. “Is that something that happens often?”  
  
“Not really.” Nora could only see half of Yang’s face from where she was. And, from where she was, it looked like she was reliving something. “But you never know how some people will react.”  
  
… Weird.  
  
“You know…” Nora hummed and went about poking around between her legs. If Yang said the condom had gotten stuck, it probably had. Somehow… Her finding the end of it sticking out from between her still puffy lips put paid to any question of that being true. A tug on it, just as a test, led to a trickle of still hot semen pouring out over her fingers and the ball behind her navel squirming. “Being tight isn’t all it's made out to be.”  
  
This was just inconvenient.  
  
“Says you. I thought you were great… Is there an echo in here? Whatever.” Yang finalized her search for background noise by leaving it on the Scifi channel. It looked like, this time, they were looking for the mythical Gruman, the Grimm-human hybrid that had terrorized the people of Anima in legend. Nora was pretty sure that it had just been bandits in masks, like it always was, but whatever paid their paychecks. It was good for a laugh. “You think you’re up for another round?”  
  
“... Uh…” Nora pulled at the still stuck condom again and flexed her abs. The resulting mess basted her entire hand and the sheets behind it, but she finally felt the condom _move_. “Give me a minute? And a towel? And a glass of water?”  
  
Nora’s bell hadn’t been rung yet. Not even close.  
  
… And it wasn’t time for homework yet. Yeah.  
  
She’d show them.


	10. What Do You Mean, the Naughty List

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yet another Christmas piece, this time without sex! Still an AU of YDCT, and totally worth reading!
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/19043482/chapters/45231835
> 
> Read this (and the first chapter of this thing we've got) to get an idea of what's going on!

“Twas the night before Festivus, and all through the dorm, not a creature was stirring, not even Blake with her smut. Stuffed with tuna and content enough to purr, she wouldn’t move for anything, not even my mutt.”

It was a good day. We’d stuffed our faces with food, exchanged the gifts that would be opened in the morning. I was feeling as refreshed as I ever was. We’d had Ruby’s team over even, and the sugar had flowed like water. It had been a good day and everyone had had fun.

Ruby had vanished hours ago with her team and was probably halfway to Patch. Or halfway to whatever was in the opposite direction to Patch. I wasn’t worrying. She’d be back in the morning with some new stories to tell.

Not bad for a holiday I’d made up wholesale, seven days before the end of the year, every year. Ruby had needed cheering up after Summer. We both did. . Still miss her sometimes. Her and her cookies.

Yeah. I had feelings. Weird, I know… Festivus had helped. Another thing I’d stolen from… I couldn’t remember. A movie? Maybe? Whatever. It was a thing. The end of the year celebrations where everyone got drunk and celebrated that they’d lived another year just hadn’t hit right for a pair of kids that had just lost their mom. Or a mostly absent father. Or a lush of an uncle.

And, so, here we were today. The end.

Don’t ask.

“Did you know that you’re saying that out loud?” Blake asked with sleepy, narrowed eyes from her bed. My dog, Zwei, kicked his legs cutely at her feet; her toes curled in instinctive revulsion and that was that. The savage beast had been tamed and…that wasn’t racist! I was talking about the dog! Stop looking at me with those accusing eyes! “What are you doing?”

Ah, Blake, you could never let anything go. That was why I liked you. That and other things that I couldn’t say in polite company. Or on Festivus.

It was against the rules. The rules that I’d made up, sure, but it was against the rules.

I had to wait until tomorrow for that. Weiss was looking forward to the airing of the grievances. She hadn’t been subtle about it. I was pretty sure that was going to be her favorite part.

“Narrating our first end-of-year holiday as a team is what I’m doing,” I explained easily, pencil scratching quickly on notebook paper. Names were changed. Locations were erased… A new holiday movie for kids was in the works and this was gold. I’d stay above the waters of financial insolvency another day with this. “I’m going to be putting this into my memoirs.”

Blake thought that over. Not for very long. “You’re _seventeen._ ”

“Poppycock. Humbug and balderdash. Age doesn’t matter. You can never start soon enough when it comes to your legacy. You have to do it fresh. My family might not have a history of dementia or memory problems, but you never know.” It wasn’t like career Huntsmen and bandits had long life expectancies, after all. I then struck that line from the record. No one needed to know that. “When I retire I’m going to have to keep myself up to date.”

Jaune rolled over in bed as well, not so visibly tired after the long day we’d had. He was vibrating slightly, actually. The team leader cookie-eating challenge, which Ruby had won, of course, had left its mark. A sugar rush for the ages and what might be pre-diabetes. He was a braver person than I. “Didn’t you say that sixty percent of Huntsmen never do?”

“No one likes a killjoy, Jaune.” I admonished him with a flourish of my pen on paper. It was very disapproving. I didn’t think he noticed that, but it was. “But I did. I did say that. Not going to lie. I’m liking those odds anyway.”

Weiss snored, all worn out by the impromptu holiday cheer. A cute little whistle, that noise she made when she’d run out of all of her energy for the day, and her sleeping form couldn’t be bothered to act all prim and proper.

I interpreted that noise as I willed, of course.

“Exactly, partner. In my bed,” I agreed shamelessly, “surrounded by my friends. And family, of course. That’s when the lights are going out for this lady. You know me so well.”

I hoped anyway. Nice as it was to think about going out in a blaze of glory, I think I preferred not leaving my family behind with my remains in a closed casket. Features like mine deserved to be put into the ground whole. Also, we’d done the closed casket thing once already within this generation.

That was a pass for me… For some reason, for some odd reason, I instantly knew that was something that I shouldn’t have said. Or thought, rather. Or even have considered. This came with a sense of creeping dread, one that had the hairs at the back of my neck standing on end.

I had no idea where it was coming from, other than that danger sense a lot of Hunters picked up over the years. It was what most people would have called a gut feeling, but refined. A year or two with Neo had made my personal sense of danger better than most people my age; I wasn’t shy about telling people what was up either. “The fuck is that?”

“What is what?” Jaune asked, baffled, and oblivious.

Blake, on the other hand, slid off her bed then right under it, like a child hiding from the monster in the closet while risking the one under the bed. Zwei vanished soon after, tiny legs kicking cutely as he finished my analogy for me by going in after Blake.

I wasn’t imagining it then. Great. Fucking wonderful and just my luck.

Life had been boring anyway.

Weiss snorted awake, mostly awake, around the same time and that impending doom just became solid. “Grandfather?”

My brow furrowed as I strapped on War and Peace. Weiss’ non sequitur wouldn’t stop me. It did require a response though. “Isn’t he dead?”

And that was when the window exploded. And the wall around the window. And just the general area; several thousand pounds of meat, metal, and wood slammed right through a fourth-story wall at several hundred miles an hour. Imploded. Disintegrated. Got turbo fucked at the speed of sound with the tinkling of bells and the shattering of the peace.

If anyone in the building had been asleep, they sure as hell weren’t now. Weiss had fallen out of her bed with a shriek that woke up everyone in the school if the sounds of architectural rearrangement hadn’t. Blake, still in her hiding spot, had managed not to make any noise at all. Jaune, of course, had screamed louder than Weiss had and at a pitch that was only slightly lower.

Me? I’d leaped back and off my chair far enough to hit the wall behind me, fast enough to put cracks in it. With my hand to my chest as I damn near hyperventilated about the rickety old sleigh that had just cut the room in two by virtue of its size...and the...Reindeer Grimm? Singular. One big motherfucker with a rack of antlers like a row of pike and a nose like a bone-covered stoplight. That too.

And then, there was the last thing. That thing. You know. The thing.

I wasn’t explaining this well. How could I?

“HO HO HO!” The white-haired, jolly, heavily muscled man wearing red and white who had clearly been driving that sleigh (We were four stories up. _How_?) clapped his hands on his stomach like it was a drum. A solid, solid drum; if the abs under there weren’t as hard as my dad’s I’d eat my bodysuit. “That was quite the landing! Sorry about that. I hope I’m not intruding?”

“What the fuck?” I gasped. “Saint Nicholas?”

Santa Claus had just crashed through my dorm room wall. That was all I had in me.

Holy shit.

“Such language… Also, saint? I wouldn’t know about that. I’m a decent enough man, but a saint? Have things changed so much while I’ve been gone?” He stroked his beard, an impressive specimen that covered his entire chest. The Grimm pawed at the floor with a snort, gimlet eye filled with a need to destroy all life...and I really should have been more worried about that. “Just call me Nick, young lady. That’ll do.”

“Sure,” was my faint reply as Weiss squawked and continued to struggle with her sheets, just within view and… I had to ask. “How’d you, uh...get up here?” I gestured at the - everything. “And what’s with the Grimm?”

I had lots of questions, but these were the ones that came to mind first. Might as well.

“Ah. Right. We are rather high up, aren’t we? And the Grimm must be making you somewhat uncomfortable. I do believe I can answer both those questions at once.” He continued to stroke that majestic example of facial hair that had ended up on his chin through some act of God, his eyes closing in thought. “My reluctant companion and servant for life, Krampus-”

I flinched like Nora had just stuck me in the balls with her emergency power taser.

“- has many talents. He can fly, for one, but navigating through winter fog isn’t one of them. That we made it as far as we did from the North pole is a miracle.” Nick pulled on his beard with a mournful expression. “The nose and its brightness is just for show, I assure you. It was quite a disappointment when I found that out.”

That explained nothing and just made more questions… Was this how it felt like for other people when I said ridiculous shit for laughs? … Probably not.

This guy was serious. Take that from me, a professional bullshit artist. I knew serious when I saw it.

“ **You old fool. My nose is just that. A nose. Not some lantern to light your way. I promised you no such thing. Only to bring you back to your home in return for my existence.** ” The Grimm suddenly howled, its voice like demented bits of gravel in a dishwasher. “ **I am a destroyer of civilization and defiler of life. Only my Queen can truly command me in all matters. You risk much with your prattle and disrespect.”**

I had both hands in front of my mouth, my eyes nearly popping out of my skull as I tried to scream.

Nick chuckled. “Ah, Krampus. Such a kidder. He still acts like the day I met him, nearly thirty years ago today. Don’t worry though. His bark is much worse than his bite. You could give him a pet if you like?”

Krampus seethed murderously, his hate for all of us obvious and the invisible leash Nicholas had him on clearly at its limits.

I instantly decided that petting him was never going to happen.

"Grandfather!" Weiss wheezed as she stumbled up and onto her feet, blanket noose falling free of her neck. That we had a talking Grimm in the room didn't seem to matter to her. _A talking Grimm._ "Grandfather Nicholas?!"

… Ooooh.

"What? I have another granddaughter? Here?" The man blinked. He then peered at my partner, closely. That she might have been mistaken didn't seem to occur to him. Also, his eyes might not have been that good. "You're Willow's spitting image at that age! What a coincidence! How have you been?"

“How have I-” Weiss twitched but pushed on. "We thought you were dead!"

"So did I for the first few years. If not for the natives that would have been the case after I ran out of bears to eat. Nice people. Good with their hands. Short. Liked the colors green and red. Wonderful folk."

I didn't allow myself to process that Nicholas had spent his whole time missing with what sounded a lot like elves. Screw that. One thing at a time. "Talking Grimm."

I didn't remember that being a thing. That wasn't in my memories. I hadn’t even had an inkling that this was a thing. Holy fuck.

What else didn't I know? This changed everything.

"They're not that impressive. Terrible conversationalists." He dismissed my concerns easily, leaving me reeling before turning back to Weiss. Also, _they_? "How is Willow? And your sister for that matter? I haven't seen her since she was in her crib.” He suddenly flushed and cleared his throat. “Oh my. I’ve gotten ahead of myself. Forgive me, dear, but what is your name?”

“Weiss Schnee, grandfather.” Weiss, in her nightdress, did a curtsy out of habit. And, damn it, was I the _only_ one that had a problem with this whole thing? And wasn’t this moving too fast? “And…” Weiss licked her lips. “You might want to sit down.”

Nicholas paused. “That bad, hmm?”

“I suppose it depends on what you’d consider ‘bad’.”

“Oh _dear_.”

==========

“Well then. That’s something. That’s something indeed.” Nicholas tapped the blade of the greatsword he’d been keeping under his seat, just as huge as he was. “That is what you get when you leave the house with the inlaws, I suppose; You wonder where the silverware has gone and the help is wearing shock collars when you get back.”

I coughed into my fist, my nerves greatly settled now that I’d forced my current circumstances into my world view. Talking Grimm. Not a talking Grimm. So what? Shoot it. Done.

The Santa thing was going to take me some time.

Blake shuffled beneath the bed.

Jaune continued to eye Krampus from behind his shield while the Grimm continued to leer at him and hiss dark things.

Weiss sputtered somewhat, then forced herself into a form of poise, “I wouldn’t say it was like that...”

“You’re a good lass, Weiss, but I’m old. Not blind. I’ve been around this block before.” He sighed. “Jacques was a better man once. Once. I wouldn’t have let him marry my daughter otherwise... But money and power got to his head. I doubt he’ll be happy to see me again.” There was a dark look in his eye as he said that. His grip on his sword’s hilt tightened. “I doubt that very much.”

Jacques. Good man. Did not compute.

“I’m going to have to cut this visit short, I’m sorry to say. I have business to attend to. More than I’d have ever thought I would,” Nick grumbled as he put his sword to the side before grabbing at a large sack at his side. “It was wonderful to meet you, Weiss. You’ve grown into a beautiful young woman.”

Weiss blushed prettily and looked away bashfully. “ Thank you, grandfather.”

“You don’t have to thank me for telling the truth,” he chortled while rummaging about in his bag...and I think I knew where this was going. “I was planning on giving these out when I got home, but I suppose it will do well as an apology instead. Souvenirs, you see.”

Yep. _Exactly_ where I thought this was going to go...and, I had to say… I was starting to get kind of excited. Why wouldn’t I be excited? Sure, Nicholas wasn’t exactly Santa, but he was the closest thing to the real deal that I would ever meet.

That little kid in me was hopping in joy as he started handing out presents. A necklace for Weiss, made entirely out of diamonds. Jaune, a stack of whetstones. Blake didn’t get anything, mostly because I don’t think that Nicholas knew she was there. And me?

Hell if I know. I hadn’t got it yet.

I swear to god I was shaking as I held my hands out, ready for my first _actual_ gift from Santa. Hell, I almost forgot about the crime against actual reindeer and nature for a moment, all the way until he plonked a lump of coal in my palms.

My heart sank right into my feet. “What?”

Oh, god, it was like my twelfth Christmas all over again.

Don’t cry. Be strong.

“My Semblance allows me to see someone’s karmic balance at a glance. And some of the events that contributed to it.” Nicholas narrowed his eyes at me and he lowered his voice. “I won’t pretend to understand why my granddaughter enjoys the things you do to her...but do you really have to be so rough with her?”

My heart went through the floor and my face lit up with a furious blush as I came up against a nightmare scenario: Santa Claus confronting me about my sex life. “Rough?” I squeaked, my body shaking now for a whole other reason. “Oh, Gods, I’m so sorry you had to see-”

“At least give her a ring if you’re going to bugger her senseless, for the God's sake!” He clapped a hand on my shoulder...and didn’t _quite_ ground my bones against each other with how tightly he squeezed. “I’d really rather not use Joyuse on my youngest granddaughter’s beau. Do you understand?”

“Crystal, Mister Schnee.”

It was going to take me a whole week to get an erection again. I just knew it.

He nodded, seeing that he’d got through to me, and patted my shoulder again, this time without trying to make it creak. “Good lass.” He hopped right back into his sleigh and grabbed the reins. “I’ll see you all again next year, hopefully without the mess!” He then snapped them. “Let us away, Krampus! To Atlas!”

“ **As you wish.** ”

“Goodbye, children!” And, with that, they reversed right out the hole in the wall. Both of them. They fell, fell, fell...then shot straight up and away on a pair of bat-like wings that had sprung from Krampus’ back in a way that would forever be in my nightmares. “And may you have a happy new year! HO HO HO!”

We all silently watched him fly away and over the horizon, outlined by the broken moon. Even Blake, who had finally found it in her to show her face after her long stay in her under-bed bunker.

“What the _hell_ was that?” Jaune asked, looking sort of weepy...and no one had an answer for him. Not even me, for once.

Nicholas came. He saw. He confused and emotionally destroyed. The lump of coal in my hand was the broken remnants of my childhood and the twisted mess that was the rest of my life, personified.

I’d never be able to fuck Weiss in the ass again without thinking of this moment. And of diamond rings.

… What a bummer.

“I think,” Blake said in her usual drawl, “that this might be what Yang was talking about. What she’s been talking about all day. It all makes sense. This is just the sort of thing that I expected to happen after Yang explained it to me.”

I looked at her, confused.

She nodded. “This was a Festivus miracle, of course.”

I chucked my lump of coal at her as hard as I could.

It fixed nothing, as usual. Also. Question while Blake rubbed that bump on her forehead and I clapped my hands free of dust.

“Where the hell is everyone?”

Weiss frowned. “You’re right. Where are the teachers? Grandfather’s entrance wasn’t exactly quiet, and the flying reindeer Grimm wasn’t exactly subtle.”

I cupped my chin in thought. “They’re probably off getting drunk. That’s what I’d do on the holidays if I was responsible for teaching a bunch of teenage killing machines. Have to burn off that stress somehow.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Yang. They are our teachers, the finest on all of Remnant. They wouldn’t be so unprofessional as all that!

==========

“Chug, chug, chug, chug, chug!”

==========

“I don’t know… They’re people too, you know. Not like they just disappear into a closet when we don’t see them.”

“Not one more word.”


	11. School is Canceled - Dead Outside: Road Trip

You know, when I popped up here, here in the great land of Japanese zombielandia, my great and urgent need for club soda wasn’t something that I’d expected to have. For obvious reasons. Who needed club soda during a zombie apocalypse, I ask you?

Maybe a couple of hundred rounds more ammunition would have been better. A crate of Dust. A gunpowder and brass ammo handloading kit in a pinch, for the Brothers’ sake. Hell, some fucking toilet paper would have been nice. In comparison, club soda didn’t even rate.

Except when it did.

All this nastiness that I’d picked up over the last hour, bits of brain and bodily fluids, wasn’t coming out no matter how much elbow grease I put into it. It was bugging the ever-loving fuck out of me...and, once I thought about it, club soda probably wouldn’t have been enough. Not for this.

I couldn’t make enough. And I wouldn’t even if I could. I might need the Aura and I wasn’t sure when I’d next get a drink to pick up the slack. You had to think about things like that when the chips were down... This was a lot of blood. Loads. Give me Neo and a toothbrush and maybe I’d consider trying. She had practiced getting this sort of crap out of a deep shag carpet. Had it down to an art form. 

This would have been nothing to her, the pint-sized psychopath.

I didn’t have a Neo though. I just had a me. And this wasn’t working out for me and I. The important people, that was.

I had a very high, realistic, and reasonable sense of self-worth, obviously. Of course, you knew that already.

“Dabbing this with a napkin isn’t doing shit. Don’t got a washer or the time to use one...” I grunted as I held up my favorite top, greatly dampened by a teacher’s lounge sink. A jacket covered in pinkish to brown stains… Real leather. I had to say it. This was real leather. From a real cow. This just kept getting worse. Son of a bitch. “Grimm have made me lazy. No muss no fuss. Gotta dodge the spray now instead of waiting for it to vape. Fuck.”

I was really upset about this. Almost as upset as I was about being saddled with a bunch of civilians with no relief in sight as the world burned down around me. Could you tell? Could you feel my anger, my despair? Of course, you could, oh nonexistent audience from beyond the veil, those of wide eyes and snackfood dusted clothing.

You were eating it all up, I bet. Bastards. Bastards all of you.

… Whatever. Not like I could do anything about that.

“Just going to have to be more careful, is all. Keep it from getting worse. Find some detergent.” I decided as my jacket went back on around my shoulders, resigned that I was going to have to let it air dry. And I reminded myself that I was trying not to sound crazy in front of the normal people. “That shouldn’t be too hard.”

All of it. I’d made it this far. I could keep making it.

I would.

Take a breath. Rub the back of my neck. Put my game face on and puff out my chest for maximum entrance-making effect. I also kept in mind that I hadn’t just slaughtered over a hundred people, just their possessed corpses before I stepped out from the nook I’d stuffed myself in, as ready as I’d ever been.

I took my spot behind everyone else, all of them far too distracted with the TV to even really notice me. Which was fair. I didn’t need to be noticed right now. Just this once.

The world that was burning down around them was theirs, after all. And it was just starting to dawn on them how fucked they all were. I could lay off on them for a couple of minutes while that went on. 

I didn’t think that anyone would have appreciated me pulling my normal hijinks right then. And I wasn’t feeling all that up to doing them either.

We were going to have a lot of work to do.

“ _ 10,000 people have been victimized by this unknown contagion in the Saitama area so far. The governor of the precinct has already called a-”  _ A gunshot from offscreen cut the news lady off. Brown hair. A good suit. A nice haircut. The look of someone that would have been better off covering gardening columns instead of the apocalypse.

Oh boy.

“ _A-a state of emergency_ ,” she continued while flinching away from a stack of wriggling body bags. Tits of steel that one. She was doing better than I’d thought she would already. “ _And has requested emergency disaster relief forces-_ ” She flinched away again at another pair of gunshots. “ _They’re firing! The police are firing at what I can see are - oh, oh no!_ ” The camera fell to the floor and that was the end of that. Other than the screaming. “ _Please, noooo!_ ”

The last thing we saw being stumbling, dragging feet moving by the camera, I think we could all tell what had happened there… I couldn’t even make a joke about that. And then, static. Silence other than panicked squabbling on the other end of the line as the studio cut away to a happy little house done up in pastels. Then, back to normal programming. To a nice young woman in yellow, that was way out of her depth, being handed some papers.

_ “I-it seems that there is a problem with our remote connection. From now on, all reporting shall be done from inside the studio. The condition outside seems extremely dangerous. Stay home unless it's absolutely necessary to go out. We will bring you more stories as soon as it's safe to cover them. _ ”

“What the hell? Is that all they’re going to say? They’re just going to pretend we didn’t see what we just saw?” Takashi said in disbelief. “What kind of bullshit is that?”

Spin. That’s what it was. Badly done spin, but spin.

“They’re trying to keep people from panicking. It's far too late for that though. Emergency services are overloaded. There are uncontrolled fires within city limits. This blew up during work and school hours and we saw how that worked out for us. They tried,” I explained. Saya, who had been about to make a comment of her own, shut her mouth and glared at me like I’d just insulted her ancestry. Those glasses looked nice on her though. “They also probably know less than we do. What are they going to say?”

Saya nodded reluctantly in agreement while everyone else stared at me. What? Did I have something on my face? “She’s not wrong. Order is the most important thing we have right now. Any order. Chaos is the enemy. Telling people that the dead have returned without anything to soften the blow, like the military going into action, will bring it all down. We experienced exactly that earlier when the principal died on the intercom.”

Oh, yeah. That must have gone over well. Not like your average teenager was a bastion of chill.

“That was fucked up.” Takashi grimaced. “I know, but-” He stopped when the news came back on again, a commercial advertising ramen noodles wrapping up. “Damn it.”

“ _ This unusual and unknown biological phenomenon that has spread throughout the United States- _ ”

“Ho, boy. The US too? They’re fucked.” I wasn’t even surprised. Even if this hadn’t been a pandemic, I had no doubt I’d have heard this anyway, just with more stories about how no one was upholding the law when it came to shutting down zombie boxing rings before it all went wrong when someone hid that they’d split their knuckles on a zombie’s tooth… Then the TV showed Beijing, which was on fire, and Moscow which had gone completely silent. “They kind of gave up on cutting down on that panic really fast, didn’t they?”

“Just turn it off!” Saya snapped, causing Kohta to jump to and do just that while she cradled her head in her hands. Our last sight was of Marine One ditching the White House. “What the hell is wrong with them!?”

I think I’d need a list to answer that one.

“It’s happening all over the world,” Rei gasped. “In just a few hours…”

“Yeah. It spread really fast and hit really hard. Magic can be a bitch like that.” I sighed and crossed my arms over my chest as that got me yet another round of stares from everyone. “What?”

This was getting weird. And not in a way I liked.

“You’re not wearing your mask. Or the big bug goggles.” Shizuka pointed out, no longer sleepy and very much aware in a way that I suspected wasn’t her default. Something in how she held herself, maybe. “You sound different without it.”

“And look different too.” Kohta cringed as he got a raised brow from me. “You’re very, uh… Don’t take this the wrong way, but...”

“Beautiful,” Saeko finished for him with a nod and Kohta looked relieved. Frustration began to set in on my part. “It isn’t obvious when you cover yourself up.”

“Oh my god. Really? Is this what we’re going to focus on? My face? Not the magic thing? Or the zombies?” I liked when people talked me up, don’t get me wrong, but this wasn’t the right time. What it was, was distracting. “Also, they aren’t bug goggles. They’re just wide-lensed to help with my peripherals. It's called functionality.”

If it worked, it worked. I didn’t give a shit...and, right. Priorities. None. These fucking people.

“They’re hideous. But, alright. Forget the goggles. They aren’t important.” Saya adjusted her glasses with a finger on the bridge. “I’ve seen things today. We all have. But I refuse to believe in fairy tales without proof.”

I had to blink at that. I had no choice in the matter. 

Fucking  _ really _ ?

“We literally just established that the dead are walking the earth. We’ve said that multiple times within the last hour.” I gave her a searching look. Was she just being stubborn or was this how her shock was manifesting? Denial? And bitchiness? “You saw me rip a zombie’s face off and set it on  _ fire  _ in the same motion.”

That had been super cool. Not exactly hard to forget.

“Your gauntlets have enough bulk to have several small fuel canisters hidden inside of them. There are open vents just in behind your knuckles. Any half-assed street magician could have pulled that off.” Saya refused to admit how cool I’d been. Also, what kind of street magician went around ripping off faces with their bare hands? “Do you take us all for fools?”

… Don’t answer that.

“Huh. You have a point there. Also, good eye. I do have canisters in them. Not fuel, but canisters,” I played along. She might have missed the shell slot, but that was a pretty good guess. Had to hand it to her. “I think I can drum up some proof for you.”

“As if you have any.”

With no build-up or explanation, I spit on the ground. 

Everyone stared at the spit. They then stared at me.

Saya’s expression was one of disgust. She wasn’t the only one with that expression. Not unexpected. “What was that supposed to prove?”

“Give it a second.”

Half a second later, as if to prove me a liar by getting up to things earlier than I’d said, my spit began to bubble. Everyone went back to staring at the spit.

“What?”

The floor then began to sizzle like bacon in a pan, a blackened divot visibly forming in the material as it was burned away.

“I…”

The staring on their end became much more uncomfortable. Especially when it went right through and into the floor below, leaving a nearly perfect circle behind.

Saya slowly brought a hand to her chin in thought. “I - suppose I’ll take magic’s existence under consideration, seeing as you still have a jaw. And a face.” The floor sagged around the hole slightly and everyone backed away from it, even me. Falling into my own spit hole would just be embarrassing. “And a body…”

“Magic is reaaaaal,” Kohta quietly squealed in joy, fists under his chin, eyes sparkling as he wriggled in place… It was honestly sort of disturbing to look at. “What spells do you know? What myths are real? Have you ever seen a unicorn!?”

Asking the real questions.

“Only the coolest ones, pretty much all myths have some truth to them, most of them gruesome and no; they wouldn’t like me anyway and I never want to meet one.”

He froze, the gears in his head visibly turning. “Eh?”

“Is your saliva always a corrosive and unidentifiable liquid?” Shizuka waved her hand and Kohta was just going to have to figure out what I’d meant by that. “If it is, how do you live with it? How do you eat? How do you get intimate?”

I cracked a grin and tried not to laugh. If I did, I wouldn’t stop for a while. “No, only when I want it to be. I don’t have to work around it at all. Eating is easy. And when I get intimate, I take my time and do it with great force.”

Shizuka gave me a thumbs up and I knew I had my first convert. Saeko was a maybe, her eyes sticking tight to the bloodstains on my clothes and how I moved. Rei continued to give me weird, non-sexual looks while shuffling up against her boyfriend. Komuro was leaning on his bat while she did that and tapping a nearby desk with his fingers while Saya looked like she was about to explode. Playtime was over. Again. Time to get to the meat of things. Again.

Fuck me we were bad at this. I get that they were looking for a distraction from their problems, but damn it. Imagine if we’d actually been in trouble? That would have been terrible.

My mood was better though. There was that. Flattery could get you anywhere when properly applied. Anyone that said otherwise was lying.

“Okay.” I clapped, cutting the questionnaire and that line of thought short. “Magic is real. I’m magic. I kill things that need killing with my magic. I’m really good at killing things. We can talk about specifics later, maybe on a nice bus while we get the hell out of here. How’s that sound?”

“Fucking  _ finally, _ ” Saya blurted out. She’d been holding that one in for a while. “Let’s just fucking go, you morons, before the dead figure out we’re here and screw everything up more than they already have.”

“Sounds good to me.” Takashi took in a deep breath and slung his bat over his shoulder. “Ready, Rei?”

“As ready as I’m ever going to be.” She twisted her hands on the handle of her improvised mop spear. “We just have to be quiet, right?”

“Pretty much. As long as we don’t make so much noise that the whole school comes down on us I’ll be able to handle it. Most of it.” I huffed. “Don’t expect a free ride.”

I had to set boundaries. Being the only fighter while taking care of six other people just wasn’t going to happen. It wasn’t like I’d let them all die, but dead weight wasn’t something we could afford.

“You don’t have to worry about that. We know what’s at stake. We’ve done what we had to so far.” Takashi gave me a sharp look and my impression that he was the main character here was reinforced. He didn’t break eye contact for even a moment. “Just lead the way and we’ll take care of ourselves.”

Nice.

“Huh. You know what?” I nodded and pulled down my goggles, the mask around my neck sliding over my mouth to connect with a solid  _ clunk _ . “I like the cut of your jib.”

“My jib?”

“Your jib,” I echoed.

Once again, only Shizuka was enthused by this.

And, with that and once again zero explanation for what I meant, we stepped back into the danger zone. First, a hop and a skip over a gigantic blood puddle, our old friend. Then the slow jog down a very long and sparsely populated hallway. Then a return to our good friend, the stairs. And then...fuck it. No one needed to know all this. I killed everything along the way, we went out through the front door and no one died.

In other words, it was uneventful besides me finally putting down Mr. Bitey, splattering his glass-riddled head all over the linoleum. His hefty contribution to the world of avant-garde art would be missed… That, and I suppose the pretty view we had of the city from where we stood.

It was kind of on fire. But the sunset was nice.

This place might not have been Beacon, but you could tell it had been built for the privileged few. Perfectly trimmed hedges, green grass, cement walkways that didn’t have any cracks in them...and just how high up we still were. A whole flight of stairs high. And this was the  _ front _ entrance.

I guess the Japanese took their student’s health seriously.

“This school is sixty percent stairs and slopes,” I commented softly as we all looked down on a fresh new wave of walking corpses shambling around on the ground below. “No wonder all of you have such great butts.”

I know. Not the time. Or the place. But when would it be if not here and now?

“Pig,” was Saya’s flat reply as we descended those steps. I think I might have been growing on her. “Remember to keep it down.”

“And that we don’t have to fight as long as we keep that in mind.” Saeko was grim as she took in the same sight I had. Not the butts. The zombies. “After having seen you in action, Yang, I have no doubt that you could take them all yourself. Or most of them. But we are not so blessed.”

“That’s sweet of you to say. Also, I get it. You have to keep that sword arm ready. And nails don’t grow on trees. I know.” I also knew that being surrounded by the enemy sounded like a shit time. I could be sneaky if I had to be and this sounded like one of those times. “Let’s go before we lose our collective nerve then.”

Saeko smirked. “As if we would.”

She wouldn’t. I’d got her measure. She’d have fit right into Beacon as long as she kept her sadistic tendencies to herself. Maybe not even that, depending on last year’s survival rates. The others? We’d have to see.

“I’ll have to hold you to that. And, question.” We now had the last flight of stairs before us, nothing but open ground left to traverse. Well, open for a given meaning of the word. Just ignore the dead people. “Why do you guys only have one bus?”

There were a bunch of Nissans. A Toyota. Mitsubishi too. Even a VW Bug. But there was only one bus in a whole ass school.

I hadn’t been to a civilian school since I was like five. But I’m pretty sure there was supposed to be more than one bus.

“We sent our non-combat sports teams off for an inter-school competition. And the music clubs were going to a charity. And-”

“What does it matter?” Saya hissed at me. “There are only seven of us!”

“I like to know things. God damn. And maybe all the other buses were stolen. Maybe other people besides us made it out...” I peered across the yard, eyes narrowed. “And locked the gates behind them like a bunch of assholes.”

That perturbed Saya enough that she had to think about it. We were more than halfway down the stairs before she spoke again at a whisper. “That is rather unlikely.”

“Your misanthropy does have a bottom then. I was wondering.”

Saya gave me a glare before focusing on the moment, all of us as a mostly coherent, silent human blob in a sea of gray...and I felt like we were smaller than we should be. More memories of a time long past? Just a hunch?

It didn’t matter, I guess. It was a feeling. But that was all. Just a feeling.

I couldn’t afford to second guess myself. So I didn’t. I just quietly ushered everyone into the vehicle, did a quick scan across the yard, just in case...and I saw no one else. Not even a hint of life. The sort of life I should be concerned with, anyway.

“Let’s go.”

I had to focus on what I had.

==========

As the school’s last bus bulldozed its way through the school gates, sending the local dead into a frenzy, Koichi Shido only had one thing to say.

“Fuck.”

He was much too busy running from the hungry dead with his future followers, sex slaves, and meat shields to say more at the moment.


End file.
